The Last Son of Krypton
by Miracle Man
Summary: What Man of Steel could have been.
1. Author's Note

I would like to make a few things clear before you get into the story.

First of all, this is in no way meant as a dig at DC, only that Man Of Steel fell drastically short in a very fundamental manner in regards to it's story. I could go on for some time about it's choice of direction and lack of characterisation in it's "characters", but I don't want any of this to come off as a rant. No, I am just of the belief that it truly could have been better had those behind the movie properly devoted more time to a story they were trying to tell, instead of just the Superpunches and the total annihilation that came about because they wrote Supes into a corner.

A while back I watched **Belatedmedia**'s 'What if Star Wars Episode I Was Actually Good?', and that in itself is the major inspiration for this story. For those that don't know, this is going to be nothing more than what I would have changed to the script had I been involved in the writing process. So the story will retain much of what the eventually movie was, just with a few adjustments where necessary in character and plot to try and actually make a cohesive, engaging story. And again, this is because I believe the movie fell short in these areas and could have very easily been lifted above what we did get from Goyer and Snyder. I am sorry if anyone feels that I am insulting them, DC or Superman by doing this, but if you have read this, please read at least a small chunk of the story before dishing out any ridicule.

The last thing is that I am aware many people may (re:will) find a movie script difficult to read, so I have forgone writing in that format and do it as a proper narrative. If you do choose to read just remember that the following is nothing more than my opinion of what Man Of Steel could have been.

_All the characters are the property of Warner Brothers and DC Comics. The following story is for entertainment and 'education' purposes only_.


	2. A Fractured World

Light, emanating from the powerful red sun flooded out across the stars, washing over a nearby planet and combining with the particles in the air giving it's atmosphere a burning orange hue. The orange light fell down, through a hole in a mountainside; shining vertically into a room and bathing a metal craft in it's glow as a man steps out from beneath the vessel, through the orange light and toward one of many computer stations filling the underground room.

"Not long now." The man said to his wife; who along with the baby in her arms were the only other people in the room. "Just got to make sure they won't be able to follow us."

"You don't suppose they will?"

"It's always possible." The man speaks as he transfers information from the computer's data stores. "Nothing will stop the more determined, no matter how difficult I make it."

The baby moved fitfully, and the woman adjusted slightly to calm him. "But you don't think they will?"

"Someone will always try." He looked up from what he was doing to see the worried look on his wife's face, and upon it's turn to fear he stopped what he was doing and moved to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. "Don't worry, we'll soon be gone, far from here. Even if someone did find us it would be a long and arduous journey, one that they would delay due to more pressing matters."

"It's just, are you sure we should?"

"We no longer have much choice. The fools left us with little option but to run and hide, and one day, maybe we could help rebuild with those who do survive."

"And the data stores?"

He returns to the computer station. "They house everything that we were, and have become. The entire history of our race, in many a sense, that _is_ Krypton. Could you leave that? Could you deny our knowledge and history to our son? To never know who he is, where he came from, and why." He withdraws from the equipment a handful of smooth, crystalline storage devices.

"We'll be there, to teach and guide him. To only carry on the best of our people through him."

"The best? Who decides what 'the best' is?" He steps beneath the large vessel and a smaller pod descends.

"Jor, please..."

"Lara, this is why he was born." He opens a slot in the smaller pod, inserting the crystal storage devices. "This, all of this, is for him. Not some small segment that we choose, all of it, any of it..."

"Uncle Jor!" Kara Zor-El yelled, long bright blonde hair flailing as she rushes into the room toward the man and wife. "My father... the council... when he heard about Kandor..."

Jor takes the girl in his arms and tries to calm her. "It's okay Kara, I'm here, now, take a few breaths." She takes a moment and closes her eyes, doing as her uncle asked. "Now, what's happened?"

The state of the girl scares him somewhat; sniffling and stuttering, terrified. "It's my father, he's completely lost it."

"What do you mean?"

"He rounded up what he could find in the remains of Kandor and led them here." As the teenager's large, watery eyes looked up at the grizzled older man's features, Jor-El suddenly found himself feeling, old. "Uncle, the Council is dead."

His grip tightened on the girl's shoulders for a moment, but only a moment. When he had mustered as much calm as he could he allowed himself to speak. "Kara, it will be alright, okay?"

"How?" The girl began to shake in his hands, "It no longer matters if what you and yours said is true, we're already facing genocide. And with my father in control no one will escape-"

"Kara!" he cut her off, staring into her. "It..." Suddenly his head drops, finding himself no longer able to lie. If she knew he was lying, what was the point? "No, you know what? You're right. It won't be alright. How can it?" He steps back, over to his wife and child. "It can't be fixed, the damned have doomed so many along with themselves. And we have only one choice left to us."

"What's that?" The teenager tentatively steps a little closer.

It is Lara who answers. "Come with us."

"Where?"

Jor-El takes the baby from his wife and returns to the small pod. "Far away. To the edge of the universe." As he lowers the child into the pod, Kara steps up to look down at him, meeting his opened eyes.

"Why? Without Krypton, what would be the point?" Even as she says it, she reaches out a hand, the baby reaching up to play with hers.

"It's not easy, is it?"

"What?"

"To even consider that there is a possibility of continuing on, that Krypton can continue to live on, long after the planet and people have become little more than dust."

"To live, to survive, without Krypton." The girl, confused, looks up to him once more, her hand still being played with. "Why would you want to?"

"Well, to live, explore, discover, these should be wants by themselves, are they not?"

"I suppose, but without Krypton, there would be no purpose to it. Wouldn't there?"

"Kara, child, you, us, him, we _are_ Krypton."

Lara intervenes, "Kara, you've come running in here, terrified because you think now that you're father has gone too far, frightened because of the civil war that irrevocably changed Krypton, looking for guidance from the only person you know to be of sound judgement. And yet, in the face of this line of thinking, in the face of your fear, you still hesitate from doing what you know, and feel is the right course of action. Why?"

"I... don't know."

"Everything we have done these past months, has been for a better future, for him. He is our future, loved or lost he will be the future of our race. Whether that future is our salvation or our reckoning, only time will tell."

Jor-El, dark and feeling far older than his years, feels compelled to respond to his wife, "The salvation of our people was forfeit the day the Council met Zod in the field of Kandor. If the universe has a soul, it has a brutal sense or irony." Lara reaches out and lays her hand on her husband's, never taking her eyes from her son.

"Heresy!" The sharp, strong male voice drags all their attention to the door. Five men stand there, only two wearing full battle gear, one wearing a citizen's clothes, and the last, standing prominently in the centre wore something in between.

"Father-" Kara started.

"I will deal with you shortly girl!" The man in the middle snapped at her, causing her to flinch back. Jor's brother Zor-El stepped forward, looking from the people to the ship and back again, two of the other four fanning out a little. "Planning a trip, brother?"

"Yes actually, many things to do, so many places to see."

"The Council has declared that none are permitted to leave in these times of darkness."

Jor looked to Kara and back to his brother quickly. "I hear that they no longer have much to say about anything."

"They will. In time, others will rise to the seats that have been vacated." Zor-El spoke calmly, as though it were the most rational thing in the universe. "And until they are the Council's final decrees shall be adhered to, by everyone."

"You would see us all dead." There was no hint of a question.

"If that is what it took, yes." Jor-El carefully, slowly reaches his hand across to the control panel of his son's pod.

Kara stepped forward. "Father, you can't-"

An immediate backhand flashed through the air to slam into her jaw, words completely lost as she was sent sprawling. "Now is not the time for you to speak your opinion, Kara Zor-El. It seems I have allowed you to spend too much time away from us, in the apparently less than capable hands of my brother and his wife. An error I now only wish I could rectify."

There is a loud _click_ followed by a _whoosh_, and Zor-El turns to see the pod the child was in has gone, already little more than a burning line in the atmosphere. He droops his head, the pain and frustration evident in his voice. "Why do you do this to me, brother?"

"Why do any of us do anything?"

Zor turns his head to his brother, nostalgia twinkling behind his eyes. "Because it is all we can do." Zor looked from Jor to the computer console. "You took the data stores from the Council Archive. You of all people need not be told what a crime that is, to take the store of Kryptonian knowledge off-world. The threat that presents to us."

"Of course. It was a wise decision by the Council all those many thousands of years ago."

"And yet you contradict that edict now."

"They contradict me."

"One cannot convince a zealot of anything. You taught me that."

"What happens when two zealots meet each other?"

"What happened to you Jor?"

"I woke up."

For what seems the longest moment of the two men's lives, they just look at each other, before finally, Zor addresses what holds them still. "Well, I suppose we should see this through."

"I suppose so."

In a flash gunfire, smoke and painful screams fill the room. Through the haze three rays of light tear through Lara's neck and chest as she grapples with one man, having ripped off a piece of his armour only to bury it in his neck before the two fall to the floor together. Jor ducks, dives and draws his own weapon, gunning down first Zor and then the two by the door, and when he turns to the last he sees Kara pulling herself out from beneath him, having managed to somehow turn a knife back on him.

Scrambling to her feet the girl looks around, wide-eyed and gasping. "What? What? But... what?" She hears a stumble and turns to see Jor, the only other person still on his feet, though by the wounds in his belly it was plain even to her that he wouldn't be for much longer. "Jor... I... I... what..."

"Kara..." He turns away from his wife's lifeless body, pushing it back as best as he could. There would be time for that when he was dead. "Kara, I need you, to help me." She was already at his side, taking an arm and helping him across to the computer console.

Once he was seated he opened a compartment and took out a brain scanning device, a disc smaller than the palm of his hand. He placed it on top of his head where it immediately sprouted small cables which spread over his head like an insect. Already starting up the programs he required, he had completely lost himself in it, forgetting about his niece until he began to speak, noticing she was not there, only to turn painfully to see her kneeling over her father's corpse. "Kara, I still need your help."

"Why?" The girl mumbled, never moving, the pained anger evident in her voice. "What's the point?"

Knowing he didn't have the time for this, he began the program, taking live scans of his brainwaves. "You'll have to find that for yourself."

"There's nothing left. I... I don't know..." The girl was stumbling over her words as she wept.

Turning back to the computer before his eyes could return to his wife, he was in the process of saving the sum of his experiences as best as he could. "But for now, how about something as simple as, to live?" Kara thought about it for a moment, then rose, turning from her father, tears sliding down her cheeks as she moved to her Uncle, the rest of her family already dead in the ongoing decades long conflicts begun by General Zod and his heretics; he was all she had left. "I need you to do something very important for me." Jor said as he removed the scanning device and withdraw a data storage crystal from the computer. Kara remained silent as he stood, groaning as he held his shredded belly with one hand, holding out the crystal with the other. "I need you to follow my son across the stars, and take care of him, to guide and teach him."

"B-b-but, what..." the girl was shaking now, struggling to hold her emotions back.

"I cannot."

Slowly she took the crystal from him, before looking up once more. "The stasis..."

"The process of merely waking would kill me." He let go of the crystal, moving his hand to her shoulder, but there was no comfort to be found for either of them. "I'm sorry child, so very sorry that any of this has happened, that this has now fallen to you. But, there is no one else."

"I'll be all alone, on an unknown world, with no knowledge..." she just trails off into silence.

"Which is why my son will need you." He pulls her close, holding her as best he could as she shook in his one arm, crying into his chest. "We are rarely ready when life asks something of us. What matters is how we handle ourselves when it does. Face it with open eyes, and an open mind." He kisses her on the head and leans down to speak into her ear, "When the time comes, be who you _want_ to be."

"Okay." She whispered softly, strong despite the lumps in her throat and chest. "I promise, I will take care of him."

"Good girl. Go now."

A moment later they parted, Kara never turning her head to look him in the face, just following her feet as they took her up the steps; Jor watching as she disappears into the spacecraft he had been intending to use himself, though not prepared as he had as wanted.

Unable to move far he stepped across to his wife where he fell to the floor, pulling himself around so he sat with his back to a column, dragging Lara's body over his legs. Looking down at her face he smoothed her hair away, only for it to be blown around as the vessel came to life, to begin moving through the open bay doors.

Jor lifted his head up to see the end of his world; ships large and small across the horizon, some of the dogfights coming increasingly closer as smoke rose in patches far and near in every direction against the orange sky. And everywhere, weapons fire and debris crashed and tore at everything. At first his vessel moved toward that destruction, before curving upward, carrying his niece toward silent safety far above.

So there in that hanger Jor-El sat, in a growing pool of his own blood, cradling his wife's corpse on his lap as he heard the continuing, slow destruction of his world; his people. The seconds stretched into minutes and beyond, Jor-El waiting for death to come and take him, with the only comfort to be found; the safety of his son, and his niece, hopefully to find and take care of each other on the edge of the universe, so far from where he sat then. And it was no different when he slumped to the floor, the last of his breath leaving him as he remained at Lara's side, the trail his son and niece had burned into the sky upon their escape having long dissipated above the warring factions, battling over the remnants of their destroyed planetoid, their doomed civilisation.


	3. Instinct

"Miss Sullivan?" The teacher asks, looking at the small fourteen year old blonde girl who appears more focused on doodling on a piece of paper than paying any attention to the lesson.

Yet, hunched over her drawing as she is, she answers concisely without ever looking up. "Why should I help those who are unwilling to help themselves?"

"And what if they are unable to?"

Now the girl pauses and raises her eyes. "That's interesting." After a moment she turns her head back to the paper, continuing as she was before. "Well, I guess that would depend on your definition of 'unable'."

"How so?"

"Well, are they a prisoner, bound and trapped, mentally or physically wounded, in a coma, or is it merely that their fear response is to freeze?" She turns the paper on an angle, tongue now poking out the side.

"Freeze?" One of the other children said, smiling and barely holding back from laughing, "Who would freeze?"

But before anyone can respond another student pipes in; "I thought it was only 'fight or flight'?"

"No." The teacher said, looking to them all, "It is now thought to be that there are the three responses, and though it is more or less an instinctual response a person's brain is clever enough to search for and find the one that is most successful. Be that to fight, freeze, or flee."

"Batman would fight." a student at the back shouted, "Batman'd take them all on no matter what!"

"Yeah," the student next to him said, "But that's because he's Batman."

"He probably froze as a kid." the blond girl said, still focused on her drawing.

"You take that back!" the other kid shouted.

"Why? What are you gonna do?"

"Fight!" The kid kicks the chair back as he stands, though more in jest than really meaning it. "And you?"

"Flee, probably."

"Alright Peter, sit down." The teacher said, taking control once again. "And besides, Batman's just a story the police over in Gotham made up to scare the criminals, just like your parents told you a bunch of things that aren't true to get you to do things when you were younger."

"What!" One kid says, "You mean I _can_ sit two inches from the TV and I won't get square eyes?"

"I can pull a face and it won't get stuck that way?"

"The world won't end if I don't go to school?"

It was now that the teacher saw one child with a hand raised, nervous, unsure, waiting for permission. "Yes Clark?"

"I was just wondering..." He paused a moment, unsure and even more nervous now that they were all actually listening to him, but now with no choice he bulldozed on. "What if someone, well, chose not to?"

"Not to what?"

"Well, if a person's instinct was to fight, but what if they just, um, chose not to?"

The only person not looking at him was the blond girl across the room, yet she was the first to open her mouth, "You probably made a bad choice then."

A group at the back snickered until the teacher shot them a severe look before she turned on the blond girl. "Miss Sullivan." The voice was as severe as the look, commanding attention, but all she got from the blond girl was that she froze. "If something ever happened to you to make you this way we can talk about it later, but as of now, in my classroom, I will not have you belittle that someone is making a conscious choice not to fight. Do you understand me?"

The girl turned her head upwards at the teacher, and though Clark could not see her face he did see the momentary confusion on the teacher's before the girl stood up and looked across the room at him. "If someone is making your pathetic little life hell and you're actively doing nothing about it then that's not choosing not to, that's fleeing. But, if however you are referring to helping other people, rather than just yourself than you're an even larger lump of waste because you're then implying that you actually have the ability to help someone but are choosing not to, and personally, I have no time for someone like that."

"Sullivan! Out now!" The teacher said fiercely, pointing at the door. "I don't care where, just get out!"

Pouting, the girl turned back to her desk, scooped all her stuff into her bag except for what she had been drawing, and eyes on the floor strode out the door. The teacher stepped a little over to Clark, opened her mouth, and then the girl stalked back into the room, over to a corkboard on the wall and pinned her drawing on it, standing there long enough to scribble a few words before stalking back out again.

When she was gone again the teacher looked at Clark once more, and said, "Clark, if you truly are able to make a conscious decision to not fight someone, no matter the situation, that is a very admirable thing, and I wish there were more people in the world like you." She then withdrew, taking the attention of the class once more, but Clark's was on the drawing.

Too far away for anyone else, it wasn't an issue for Clark, eyesight always far better than the average he could see even the black and white sketching across half the room with ease. To him it looked like in one corner was a planetoid with a domed city, in another were two sorrowful faces separated by a wall of some sort, and beneath those were what were presumably – contextually anyhow – those two people running hand-in-hand. And the words, hastily scribbled in the space between; _ They've got guns!_ And below that; _And I haven't. Which makes me the better person, don't you think? They can shoot me dead, but the moral high-ground is mine._

The words, carefree dismissive nature of the danger with the joy of the running contrasted so sharply with the sorrow of the faces that Clark just could not grasp it. He turned away, looking out the window as he disregarded whatever the teacher was saying, mulling the words, the joy, and the sorrow. The entire world fell away as he let time flow by, just waiting for it to end.

Soon he stopped thinking about it, and he was thinking about nothing, hearing nothing, saying nothing, not really seeing anything, just waiting as he saw, but didn't really look outside. And then, suddenly, he heard, everything. Literally, everything. His teacher's words, his classmate's whispers, the scratching of pens and buzz of the bees beyond the window, even the steady _drip, drip, drip_ of water echoing in pipes.

The next he knew his hands were on his ears, trying to shut it all out. Thinking the world was ending he opened his eyes, and saw that everyone else was fine. He opened his mouth but he heard nothing come out, yet seeing a handful of his classmates turn to look at him only made him panic more. He squirmed in his seat, squeezing his eyes shut. When he opened them again everything seemed to fade away, and suddenly he could see _through_ everything, everyone in the room little more than skeletons. He looked up to see the skeleton of his teacher walk over to him, reaching out to him. Horrified, he opened his mouth and ran from the room.

Suddenly he found himself closing a door and was squatting on the floor of a dark closet, though it was quietened somewhat the sounds weren't letting up. Suddenly there was a knock that reverberated in his skull, followed by a girl's voice, "EXCUSE ME, ARE, ARE YOU OKAY?"

This time when his mouth formed words he heard them so loud he tasted blood in his nose, "LEAVE ME ALONE!" even though he never remembered screaming. There was a _click_ and a _screech_ in his skull, and when he looked up he saw the skeleton of a small girl – had he been able to process anything at the moment, he would have guessed she was maybe a bit younger then himself by her size – looking down at him. He felt himself cringe and try to pull back, though there wasn't much room for it.

The girl shuffling to sit in front of him seemed almost as loud as the door closing, and when she opened her mouth again he instantly wished she hadn't. "WHAT IS IT?"

"I... CAN'T... CAN'T... SHUT IT... OUT!" Somehow, he knew he was barely speaking, but when he did it felt as though his head was breaking.

There was a soft touch on his shoulder, and another on his head before he heard the girl speak, much softer this time, though nothing else was. "Shut what out?"

"THE SOUNDS!"

"What sounds?"

"ALL OF THEM!" It was beyond overwhelming, "IT'S TOO MUCH... I CAN'T..." It seemed to be forever before the girl spoke again.

"Everything?" the word seemed to hang out there before she continued, "What about my heartbeat?" It was there, along with the rest, no louder or softer. He nodded emphatically, it was all he felt he could do. "Why don't you try focusing on that?"

Figuring that nothing could possibly make it worse he tried it, doing all he could to push out all the sounds except for the steady _thump-thump_, _thump-thump_ of the girl's heartbeat. When those sounds started to increase in his skull he opened his eyes, and finding himself looking through the girl he tilted his head upward, until he was actually looking at her heart. _Thump-thump_, _thump-thump_. He could literally see it as it beat, oddly calming, and, he realised, the sound of life itself.

_Thump-thump_, _thump-thump_, _thump-thump_, _thump-thump_. Clark found himself immersed in the rhythm, and before he knew it there was nothing else, just him, the girl, and the beat of her heart. Then, slowly, the room around him returned, the girl's muscle and skin with it. His eyes drifted further upward, and he found himself staring at the blond girl from his class earlier. "Better?"

He nodded, but was overcome with an immense sense of deja vu as he looked her in the face. "You remind me of someone."

"Yes." she said, more than a little patronisingly. "We've been in the same grade, at the same school, for eight years."

Clark sat back, looking at her face, still more focused on trying to figure it out. "You noticed me?"

The girl snorted, with her pixieish face it could only be described as hilariously emphatic. "It shouldn't take a genius to notice something you see every day for the better part of a decade." Then she looked at him once more, and seeing he was looking far away, she offered her hand, "I'm Chloe."

Brought back to the present, and unable to be anything but courteous, Clark took her hand in his, "I'm Clark. But you probably already knew that."

"Probably."

He let go of her hand, shyly looking at his feet. "Sorry, I can be a little, self-involved."

"Don't worry about it. We all have our own problems to deal with. It would seem some more than others." As Clark sat back, just trying to catch his breath Chloe sat across from him, cross-legged, appearing to look into him, he got the clear impression that she was trying to figure him out. "If I may ask, what was it?"

"I don't know." He said quickly, "It's, never happened before."

"Liar." She said, almost as quickly. When he looked up at her defensively she continued, "No, its alright. Like I said, we all have our own problems. And if you don't want to share that's your own business, I just, well, kind of want to know if you're head is liable to explode again any time soon."

He took a few more breaths before he answered, deliberate, considering. "No, I think I got it now, thank you."

"Okay." She said, he could see she was a little disappointed, but she didn't push it again. She turned, half-risen before he opened his mouth. He didn't even know why he did, he just suddenly felt compelled to talk. He knew he needed to talk to someone, why not her? She seemed kind enough.

"I'm different." His head hung down, he couldn't even look her in the eye, he thought if he did he might have stopped. "I don't know why, but I can do things. I'm stronger than I should be. Stronger than anyone should be. I could see and read your drawing perfectly from across the room. I can sometimes hear things from all the way on the other side of the farm, and now, it seems I can see through things."

"Through things?" Chloe asked, "As in walls? And clothes?" already moving her arms as if to cover herself.

"Yes, but more like x-rays." He said hurriedly, looking up a little. "I mean, I saw your heart." With that his head drifted down, his eyes seemingly far away. "It was beautiful."

"Thank you?"

Clark looked up to see Chloe completely befuddled. "No, not _your_ heart, just, _the_ heart. It was steady, peaceful, rhythmic. I mean, it was a living, beating human heart."

"I... I couldn't even imagine." Chloe replied softly. For the longest time the two of them just sat there, staring at nothing, the silence eventually broken by Chloe. "My mother's in a psych ward."

That completely stumped him. The longer he met her eyes, the worse it got, so he said the only thing that he could think of, "Is it... bad?"

Before she could answer him the bell rang. The moment it finished she turned to him, away from anything they had been talking about, already rising to her feet. "C'mon. The halls'll be filled in a few seconds." And then she was out the door.

Clark waited only a few seconds before pushing himself up and returning to the classroom, more than a few of the children in the halls giving him weird looks, ranging from a little freaked to mockery. One group even laughed and winked at him, shouting after him once he had walked by, "Clark Kent! Makin' it with the weird chick!"

Disregarding everyone he was back in the classroom soon enough, everyone else already gone but for the teacher. While he was putting all his stuff away she came over to check on him. "Is everything alright Clark?"

"Yeah," he replied, never raising his eyes. "Sorry about that. I'm alright now."

The teacher touched him on the shoulder, getting him to look her in the eyes. "You sure? You can let me know if there's something wrong, okay? Any time."

Meeting her eyes he replied with; "I'm okay, really."

"If you're sure. Hurry along then." As he left the room again his eyes passed over the corkboard and he felt compelled to stop, eyes once again sucked into Chloe's drawing. The joy, the sorrow, the sad beauty and the message. Still more than a little confused he took the drawing and folded it, stuffing it into his bag as he left the room.


	4. Morality

The sun burned bright in the sky, just having passed it's highest point. Far below, the sun shone hot onto a yellow school bus as it drove down a road beside a crop-field, the corn grown tall.

Amongst the chaos of seemingly everyone in the bus shouting a hundred different things all at once Clark manages to hear, "How old _are_ you?"

"I'm old enough to know what those two were doing in the janitor's closet the other day!" He shouted, pointing at Clark and Chloe, which is followed immediately by an overly-emphatic series of slurping noises.

Clark was looking out the window, doing his best to ignore the rowdiness going on behind him. Next to him Chloe sat playing on her phone. "You know, I've found that the best treatment for dealing with school social issues is apathy with a tinge of satirical sarcasm."

"I'm trying to ignore them."

"Yep. You're forgetting the 'satirical sarcasm' part."

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean."

"It's just as a great man once said, 'Sometimes, to come back up, you have to go down, into the darkness.' Stare down the crap and just take it all unflinchingly as it is thrown at you."

He turns to see her still not having looked away from her phone. "None of this bothers you?"

"Should it?" In the silence she glanced at him, and seeing that he's in no way reassured by that she continues with; "Listen Clark, a lot of people say a lot of things. I can't control it, and it doesn't hurt me, so why does it matter?"

"Does it?"

"Matter?"

"Hurt you?"

When she didn't respond he looked at her, to see that she had stopped what she was doing, absorbed in something far away. "I've heard things a lot worse. If it's not true, and I know that, why should I let it hurt?"

"Well, because it isn't true, for starters."

"We can't control how and what people think, Clark. And even if I could, I don't particularly think I'd like it one bit."

Another of their classmates jumps up onto the back of their seat, barging in on their conversation. "Like what one bit? What are you two canoodling about now?"

"Nothing." Clark says a little impetuously, still beyond annoyed by the rumours. Chloe however, waits not a moment longer before giving her own response.

"Butt sex"

"What?" the other student says, as open mouthed as Clark.

"I told him it's fine if he's curious, but I'm _not_ interested in getting _my_ hand all covered in shit. So we're gonna have to find something else to use on him."

"Wh-what?" is all the kid manages to stutter out through uproarious laughter. "Hey guys! You gotta hear this!" he says, jumping out of his seat and scrambling back toward another group.

Clark stares wide-eyed at Chloe. "Why?"

"You know what?" she says with a broad smile, fingers moving as she goes back to playing games on her phone, "I was wrong. I _do_ enjoy influencing what people think."

Meanwhile, a man is driving a sports car fast and loose, paying no heed to any of the road laws as he speeds around the traffic. He races around a corner, drifting wide of the car in the correct lane as he curves around, only meters from a bridge. Ahead of him, the bus driver sees the sports car come out of nowhere, from behind trees and the other car in a bend in the road. Panicking, the bus driver hits the brakes.

The driver of the sports car, his speed far beyond that of the car in the correct lane, sees it all happening as well, but he's already on the bridge, the bus directly ahead of him. He does the only thing he can think of; he plants his foot down on the accelerator.

The car in the correct lane and the bus both see the sports car accelerate. The second car also hits the brakes, and as the bus driver – still freaking out – spots the sports car try to get across into the proper lane he pulls the wheel to the other side to avoid any possibility of a collision.

The sports car is well and truly out of danger in only a handful of moments – barely the intake of a breath – but then the bus driver – still in panic mode – sees that he's turned towards the edge of the bridge, and so he throws the wheel the other way, hard.

But the bus continues to drift towards the edge of the bridge, and then it begins to tilt. And as he hears the screams behind him he feels the weight of the bus start to go even further, a loud _scrape_ making itself heard above the noise of the children. To anyone who would have seen his face in that last moment as he feels himself tipped to his side, it would have been painfully obvious what his thought was; _There's nothing I can do_.

Clark, just as the bus tips over the edge, puts his arm out and braces Chloe back against the seat. When the bus hits the water a pair of his classmates fall on top of him and Chloe from across the aisle, as they do he shifts himself and Chloe, managing to catch them both before they fall on either themselves or his friend. Not a moment later his back hits the glass window, cracking it as the bus hits the water.

By the time Chloe has pushed herself up, coughing a little around the water already flooding in through the open windows now at her feet, she looks up to see the teacher and a pair of students at the emergency door, trying to pry it open. She sees the back of Clark as he climbs across the last few seats to get there and help, while all around her there is coughing and spluttering and screaming and crying as everyone is overcome by the moment. And then water starts falling from above, and she looks up to see the bus has already sunk beneath the surface of the water.

When Clark gets to the door he grabs the handle with the one hand and plants his other on the door, the others take it as him helping them and after a couple of moments the handle swings across and with a shove the door opens, more water flooding in as the bas starts to tip toward it's back with the increased water weight. He looks up through the windows to see the water surface already a few meters away.

As he turns back he hears the teacher behind him hurrying people out the door, the bus driver has gotten on his feet and is hurrying those toward the front back toward him, but he'd gotten stuck with a couple who seemed to refuse to move, and was currently dragging them through the water. He sees Chloe trying to push others along ahead of her, and a couple of others flailing through the water around the quickly submerging seats.

Ignoring the yells of the teacher he hurries back through the bus, giving everyone a helping hand whenever needed. At one point he is pulling someone up by their arm – he couldn't have said who, mostly it was a mess of faces and water – but when he pulled them up he felt another hand taking over, and looked over his shoulder to see the douchey face of Pete Ross. Still looking behind him he saw the door had been completely lost to the water, and the bus driver dive, three of his classmates following him. "Can you swim?" He shouted at Ross.

"No, why?" came back at him, and when he nodded toward where the door should have been Ross looked, and when he turned away Clark saw the look of total fear. But a moment later he shakes his head and goes back to helping the last few people with them.

A moment later Chloe almost fell on him, so severe was the tilt of the bus now, almost two thirds of the bus filled with water. "Is there anyone else?" She shouted.

"I don't know." he yelled back. He glanced around but couldn't see anyone other than them, Pete Ross and the teacher hustling two out first. "He can't swim." He yelled instead.

Chloe nodded and touched Ross on the shoulder. "Come on." Not waiting for a response she drags him along through the water as Clark turned back to the rest of the bus and started splashing through it, checking every single seat. At the back of the bus the teacher asks Chloe if there's anyone else, and she shrugs in response, looking at Ross she says, "Keep a hold of my hand, keep your eyes open, and do exactly what I do. Okay?"

"Okay..." he muttered, stuttering.

"Good. Now take a deep breath." She breathes deep, Ross does so immediately after, and follows her as she dives into the water.

As she does Clark comes to a stop, seeing a black-haired girl passed out a seat near the front. He turns her over and upon seeing the face he recoils a little, hesitating. And as he looked at her, time seemed to stretch out into an eternity. Remembering all the times she made fun of him, called him a coward for refusing to stand up for himself, for recoiling any time someone would try to hit him, picking on him for not talking to others, fearing getting close to anyone, playing along with her little prissy friends when one of them pretended to like him only to punch through how much he doesn't fit in with them. Giving him crap for years, never ending. She hadn't even let up the past few days with the recent rumours after he freaked out and he and Chloe had come out of the janitor's room together. Where Chloe had more or less managed to divert it into a reputation of a slut tossing the weak shy kid a bone, he viewed that his reputation somehow got worse. "Freaks stick together." some were saying, and he'd overheard the girl herself, "No thanks, lanky acned wreck. And did you see the way she came out of there? It's a safe bet that he didn't even do anything for her." And that conversation had only gotten worse from there.

Heart clenched, he looked up toward the teacher, the only person left in the bus, and before he knew it he'd already taken one splashy step away from the girl. He met his teacher's eyes and shook his head. "Come on then!" She shouted, holding out her hand.

Clark waved her away, "It's alright. Go ahead."

"I can't." She shouted back.

"I'm right behind you." he said, diving only a few feet. He kept his eyes open, and was grateful to see his teacher dive less than a moment later, already turned for the door. A moment later he hit the surface within the bus, and looked over his shoulder at the girl's feet, just visible at his angle.

There he floated, wanting nothing more than to just leave her, turning away, he shut his eyes, but no matter how hard he breathed, he heart just wouldn't unclench. He couldn't breath, and suddenly his legs felt heavy. He looked up, and realised that there was barely any light touching him now through the water. Glancing around there was barely any room left in which to float. He found himself holding onto a seat, struggling to breath.

Opening his eyes he found himself looking at the girl once again, but everything she'd said just wouldn't leave his head. He saw her chest rise and fall, and then he felt the metal in his hand cringe and screech and his grip. He looked away, but with no intention of actually going anywhere, suddenly he started breathing easier, and he felt himself floating, outside of time, outside of space, just existing.

His gaze drifted back to the girl, starting to float on the water beside him, and then suddenly he held her around the waist, and he threw himself through the nearby window, back first, shattering the window and dragging the girl along behind him as he kicked through the water, the dull sunshine slowly getting brighter as he kicked. Somehow, that moment, right then, just felt... _right_.

Just back of the water bank, the bus driver sat on a risen tree root, smoking as he tried to stop himself from shaking. Spread out between him in the tree line and the water were the students, many too stunned and pale from shock to say or do anything, though Pete Ross and a couple of others were making their way from person to person, checking that they were all alright. A handful of adults who witnessed the crash had stopped and dove into the water when they had seen the students start to emerge from below, now helping the teacher to keep them as settled as they could be. And Chloe stood ankle-deep in the water, looking at the surface, waiting.

She looks over her shoulder to see the teacher, terrified, trying to count all of the children. It was at that moment Chloe heard a loud splash as the water broke, looking over to see Clark swimming over to her. She takes a few steps back out into the water, until she's waist deep, but seeing that Clark is coming to her faster she waits, and then she sees Clark carrying a body.

Clark makes his way through the water with ease, the moment he can stand he lifts the still unconscious girl into his arms, rushing over to the bank with Chloe at his side. "I need help here!" he shouts, the water at knee height.

Not everyone looks at him, but the handful of adults – except for the bus driver – all begin moving over. The moment they are past ankle-depth he lowers her to the ground. "Is she breathing?" Chloe asks, dropping at his side.

"I... I don't think so." Clark stammers.

"Out of the way." Chloe says, pushing Clark to the side, who, unsteady on his heels, falls back until he throws out a hand to stop himself. Chloe though jumps into action, breathing into the girl's mouth, then pressing down on the diaphragm, counting to five, and doing it again.

Feet slam into the ground all around him, and Clark looks up to see four adults and three of his classmates watching on as Chloe continues what she's doing, again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

Then suddenly, when she goes to breath into the girl's mouth, the girl's chest heaves and water comes spraying out as she rolls over, coughing, whining and crying.

Clark looked to Chloe to find her beaming, that crazy broad smile back on her face as she looked from the girl, to him, and back again. And Clark himself was, relieved.

An hour later they were all up by the road, the police taking the last of the statements as the student's parents were arriving. Chloe stood next to Clark, wrapped in a blanket, silent as they waited, watching the first of their classmates leave with a parent, grandparent, uncle, aunt or sibling. And as Clark watched them all go by he truly understood what Chloe had told him the other day. "You were right." he said.

"I know." was her reply, getting him to look at her when she continued with, "About what?"

"Everyone has their own problems." He looks back to the street. "Living their own kind of hell that I cannot understand. It's selfish of me to think that no one can possibly understand me, when the truth is I haven't really tried to understand them."

"Slow down Clark. I don't want you to have a brain aneurysm."

He turned back to her, face in a loving frown, "Has anyone ever told you that you're frustratingly annoying?"

"Yes. Many times." She replied, smiling. After a moment Clark cracks one too. "Look at that, he _can_ smile."

"Don't push it."

"What are you gonna do if I don't?"

He takes a moment, thinking about it, then decides on, "Absolutely nothing."

"There you go." She says, patting him on the arm.

"Um, excuse me?" They heard a girl squeak, both of them turning to see the dark-haired girl they had both saved, wrapped in a blanket, eyes locked to the ground at her feet.

After a long silence Chloe urged her on, with a dragged out;"Yes?"

"Um..." Is all the girl says again, it is apparent that Chloe is shocked, though exactly why is yet unclear. "Well, um... Why?"

When Clark shyly doesn't answer Chloe does for him, "Why what?"

The girl, trembling, inches forward, and barely opens her mouth again when she asks; "Why, did you save me?"

"Well, what else was he gonna do?" Chloe bursts out with, "Let you die?"

It is then that the girl looks up at Clark, big eyes watering as she bites her lip. But all this is lost on Clark who is looking away from her, shame apparent for only a moment, never noticing the girl had inched even closer. Without warning she throws herself at Clark, who shocked, just stands stiff as a board, arms wide as the girl wraps her arms around him, stumbling a repeated "Thank you." over and over, as though she could never say it enough.

"No, um, really..." Clark was stumbling himself, speaking into the girl's hair, "It was Chloe really, she, ah, she did most of it..." He looks at Chloe to find her smiling weirdly, as though she's on the verge of outright laughter.

The girl pulls back, and directs herself to Chloe only long enough to say, "Then thank you." Then she turns back to Clark, and starts muttering all over again. "I'm really sorry, Clark. For, um, well, ah, I shouldn't, ah, ever..." She takes a deep breath, and with red cheeks blurts out, so fast it's almost incomprehensible, "I never should have joined in with the rest in everything they've ever said about you."

As the girl takes a few deep breaths Clark watches her, open-mouthed, not able to think of anything to say. Chloe, for her part, continues to hold herself back from laughing. And the longer she and Clark look at each other, the more uncomfortable it gets. Until, the silence is finally broken by an older woman calling out from a few meters away, "Lana!"

The girl turns her head around, shouts, "Coming!" and in a flash is looking at Clark again. Apparently rooted to the spot she doesn't seem to want to leave, yet also doesn't appear to be able to say anything. Then, finally, face a beet red she says, "Again, I'm sorry. And, and..." Then she mutters, looking at the ground once again, "You're a good person." And without another second to breathe she turns and hurries off.

Clark stares at her fleeing for a long moment, still not knowing what to think, but suddenly feeling better about himself, if only for a moment until he remembers that he actually wanted to leave her to die.

About fifteen seconds of dead silence passes by, until Chloe suddenly shouts loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear, "Lana Lang everybody!"


	5. A Hero's Conscience

Clark sat in the truck, despondent as his father sat beside him, at ease driving along beside a cow paddock.

"So," Jonathan Kent opened, "I got an interesting phone call from the school earlier..." He glances over at Clark, still wet from the bus crash, "Well, before that one. Supposedly quite a few people saw you coming out of a janitor's closet with a girl the other day. Was that the blond girl?"

"Chloe." Clark replied automatically.

"She's cute."

"Gross, dad."

"I just mean, she seems nice."

"She is." Clark's mind on something else, he doesn't even realise what his father is meaning to get at.

Seeming like Clark isn't interested in talking Jonathan keeps trying to direct it in a lighter manner, intent on taking his son's mind off the crash. "So, is it serious?"

"She's just a friend."

"Sure." he responds with a smile, "I've had friends like that too. I mean, I was a little bit older, but still-"

Clark cuts him off, squeezing his eyes shut before looking at him. "Dad, I really _don't_ want to know."

Silence envelops them then, Clark unable to focus his thoughts and Jonathan not wanting to push his son into talking if he doesn't want to. They drive by another cow paddock, then a corn field, and a potato field after that. All the while the noise is that of the truck's tyres on the road, mixed with the radio on low, though Clark pays that no attention.

"Dad." Clark finally says.

"Yeah?"

"Can people, um, change?"

Jonathan looks at his son weirdly for a moment, but knowing he's had a pretty rough last few hours he goes along with it. "Son, I think people are always changing. A person is shaped by the sum of their experiences."

"So you're saying, that I should give people second chances?"

"If they show a willingness to change for the better, of course."

"I see."

Jonathan glances at Clark, and seeing that he doesn't seem too reassured he tries further, "Listen, Clark, I know it hasn't been easy, and there isn't much I can ever say or do that will make it so. I'm sorry son, I wish it were otherwise, but life isn't easy. It's full of hard people making difficult decisions that will always affect more people than they're thinking about. They told me about what you did, how you acted when the bus was under the water. I'm proud of you son."

Clark looks at him, a little shocked. "But, they could have found out."

"That didn't matter to you right then. You acted quickly, intelligently, and definitively, and you stayed until everyone else had gotten out." He looked Clark in the eye, "What father could be disappointed to have a son like that?"

"Well, it's not as though I was in much danger."

"No, but you were able to help, and without even thinking to leaving them behind to protect yourself, you helped. You helped them all." Looking at his son though, it was obvious that something else was bothering him, like he actually wanted him to be upset for some reason. "I can not say it will ever truly be easy son, but it does get eas_ier_. With time, and being comfortable with yourself."

"How can I ever do that? I'm not even supposed to be here!" Clark yelled petulantly.

"Son, I don't know why you're here. But here you are, and yelling about it won't change anything. Is it really such a bad life?"

Clark sighs, "No." After a few moments he goes on, "You say people change?"

"All the time, in small ways, willingly or not."

"But, what if," He trails off a little, muttering, "people... are broken?"

"Is that really up to us to decide, Clark?"

With that Clark watched the window as they drove in near silence for the last few minutes until Jonathan pulled the truck into park outside their farmhouse. Jonathan gets out and starts heading toward the house, but stops and walks around the car when he sees Clark hasn't moved.

He leans on the open window and takes a breath before he speaks. "Clark, I can't, rightly imagine what you've just gone through today. It was an accident that snowballed into a disaster. But you kept your head in there, right in the middle of it with the rest of them, and in part, because of you, no one died." He places his hand on Clark's head. "Today son, you're a hero."

"No, I'm not."

"How can you say that?"

"Because I wanted to leave her okay!" Clark yelled, eyes filled with tears, "She was unconscious and helpless and I wanted to leave her and then she'd be gone and I'd be happier!"

Aghast, Jonathan says the only thing he could think of to not make it worse. "Who?"

Sniffling, Clark wipes his eyes as he answers. "Lana Lang."

"And she makes you miserable, does she?"

Clark turns his head, too ashamed to look his father in the face. "All of them do."

"Everyone? Even Chloe?"

"Well, with her it's different."

"How?"

"It just IS!"

"Because she doesn't do it to hurt." For a long moment there was only silence, Jonathan once glancing up to look at the farmhouse door, otherwise looking around at nothing in particular as he thinks. "That's what you meant. Second chances."

"I can't do anything about it. They pick on me and make fun of me, and I literally _cannot_ do a _single_ thing, or else I'll hurt them. So because I do nothing it invites more ridicule and then no one has any interest at all in getting to know me. Explain to me how that's fair?"

"It's not." That completely grabs Clark's attention, dragging his face up to look at his father. "Life isn't fair, or simple, or easy. And I'm sorry that you've been treated that way, but surely you've noticed you're not the only one?"

"Yeah." Clark says slowly, "But that in part only makes it worse."

"And how does Chloe deal with it?"

"She doesn't care."

"Then she's lying."

"But..."

"Clark." Jonathan insists, cutting him off, "On some level, deep down, buried beneath the surface, she cares. It's just that it's easier not to." Now Clark had nothing to say, he sat there open-mouthed and looked away from his father, considering that. "Now this girl you wanted to leave, did you?"

"No."

"Did you have a chance to?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn't you?"

"I couldn't."

"Why?"

"I don't know, I just couldn't!" Clark snapped at him, but was shocked all over again to see his father smiling at him. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because," he explained, "It's not fair or easy, but in that moment, you made you're life incredibly simple. You saw someone in need of help, and in spite of anything you felt about that person, you had to help. Someone needed your help, and you gave it."

"Well yeah, but I wanted her to die."

"And now?"

"I..." Clark stuttered, suddenly unsure, "I don't know.' he finished, frustrated.

"Clark, the world isn't black and white. That would be easy, and grossly unfair."

"How? It would be simple. You do something wrong, and you get punished for it. How complex does it need to be?"

"Because many of the worst people who have ever lived believed they were doing the right thing when they were either directly, or inadvertently responsible for many of the horrors this world has seen."

"But they were wrong, everyone else knew it."

"Did they? If right and wrong was as simple as water is wet then there wouldn't be many issues. But even when people are trying to do right they very often find themselves doing something bad, even if they know at the time and think they have no other viable option."

"There's always a choice." Clark says concisely.

"Did you think that when you saved Lana Lang?" Clark looks up at his father again, face wet from tears. "We all have the ability to do great good, or great evil. The will of people to do either may vary, but we make the best choices we can, and no matter the intent of our actions we will always be judged differently by those around us. They cannot possibly know what we are thinking because, to put it simply Clark, they are not us. You are not me, and I am not you. And no one can truly make choices for another person. That way lies resentment, and pain."

Clark breathes for a minute, thinking. "But if it's so subjective, how can I know which path is right?"

"You figured it out today all right." Clark lets out a mirthless laugh. "Like I said, it gets easier with time. Be sure of yourself, comfortable with who you are, and one day you'll look back on yourself thinking you were a dumb little kid who had nothing figured out."

"As reassuring as that might be," Clark began slowly, "I have no idea who I am."

"Sure you do." Clark meets his father's eyes before he continues, "You're the boy who couldn't leave someone he hated to die." With his father smiling down at him like that, he suddenly felt somewhat, at peace. "I'd say that's a good place to start, don't you?" Clark smiles up at him, and nods. "Good, now get inside and hug your mother before she thinks something else has happened."

"Okay." Clark said, opening and sliding out the door. But after little more than an hour of his mother fussing about him and what had happened that day he couldn't take much more, though it was another three before he managed to slink away from her suddenly over-protective eye, slipping out the window and racing across the field in the last light of day, seeking refuge in the only other structure in sight; an old barn a few hundred meters from his house.

Walking inside to a corner he sat down, not looking at anything really, just sitting. And as the last of the light disappeared from the sky through the window he found himself looking at the stars, and wondering.

He didn't know how long he sat there, just looking at the distant lights. But suddenly he found himself moving, without thinking, across the floor to get a flash-light from a bench, and then over to a trap door at the side of the barn, and when he opened it his feet hit the small steps as he walked down into the darkness.

The moment he turned on the torch was the moment he saw it, and he couldn't not, the thing sat nestled in a small crevasse, slightly deeper than the floor that had been dug around it, and the room was only a little larger than the object within. Setting the light down on the edge of the wall, aimed at the object he then sat on the steps, only looking.

It could have been a lifetime, but Clark knew it was only seconds before his hand reached into his pocket and came out again clutching a folded piece of paper. Taking care with it he opened it out and by the dim light he laid his eyes on the drawing of Chloe's he had taken from the classroom a few days back. It wasn't the first time he found himself just, looking at it. But as he did he found himself remembering earlier in the day, the pain, sorrow, the joy, and he looked from the planetoid to the object in front of him. Elliptical, it was maybe five feet at the widest point. And then he reread the words, for possibly the thousandth time he reread them again, and again, and again; _They can shoot me dead, but the moral high-ground is mine._

"Clark?" He heard his father shout.

He waited until he heard him enter the barn above him to respond, "In here dad!"

He heard his father walk up behind him, taking a seat a few steps above him. "What are you doing down here?"

He couldn't take his eyes from the two faces, separated by a wall. "Do you, think, that, I'm alone?"

"No." was the reply, as though it was a ridiculous question.

"How can you think that?" Clark asked, looking over his shoulder.

Smiling. Jonathan Kent answered his adopted son with a warm heart, "Because that is the very question many men have been trying to figure out for more than a few thousand years. Are we alone?"

"You know what I meant." Clark said, turning back to the object.

"I know." his father replied gently, "And honestly son, I can't say. But what I do know, is that for as long as you are here, you will never be alone."

"I just..." Clark trailed off, gaze turning once more to the drawing, the planetoid.

"Want to know who you are." Jonathan finishes simply. Clark nods. "What's that?" Clark looks at his father and then hands him the drawing. But unable to see it in the poor light he also motions for the light and Clark provides it. Jonathan Kent studies it for a second before saying anything. "Did you do this?" Clark only has time to shake his head before his father continues, "It's good."

"Chloe did it." Clark says hastily.

"She's talented." Jonathan says, "And clever." He hands it back to Clark. "You know Clark, many people want to know where they came from, how they came to be. It's a very natural inclination. I'm not saying the answers aren't out there, or that you won't ever find them. But those people, who search to the ends of the earth and beyond for their entire lives and they still may never fully know, at least not to their satisfaction. But you want to know who you are?"

"Yes." Clark said, suddenly jumping at the possibility.

"Well, maybe you should be asking yourself who you want to be." Smiling, his father touches him on the shoulder, "Now when you're ready, your mother's got dinner ready." His father rose, turned, and walked back up the steps, heading out of the barn. "Don't let it get cold or I'll be the one in trouble!" was the last thing he called back before Clark heard the barn doors swing open and closed.

He stood but didn't move for the moment, light in one hand, paper in the other, gaze drifting from the object he knew had brought him to Earth, and the drawing his friend had made.


	6. Signal

Clark handed over the drinks, the waitress placing them on her tray and walking across the bar to the customers. He heard a small squeal and looked up to see another waitress being held down in a customer's lap.

It wasn't a few seconds before he was over there. "Is there a problem here?"

"Not at all." the man says, slurring, though his two friends aren't saying anything.

Clark offers his hand which Lana takes, gently lifting her off the man. When she steps away he looks the drunk in the eye, "Don't do that again." The man waves his hands and goes back to his drink.

"Thank you." Lana mutters as they walk back to the bar.

"Not a problem." He replies quickly, stepping around to continue his work, "But you may wanna swap with Lynette."

"No, it's okay." She says softly, "He wasn't even looking at me, he just wanted something to grab on to."

Clark looks at her for a moment, until one of the other girls comes up to the bar, unloading empty glasses. Still only looking at Lana, he says, "Holly, do you mind taking sixteen from Lana?"

"The groper? Okay." With that she turns and goes back across the floor.

"See?" Clark said to Lana, smiling, "It's not a problem." Lana finds nothing to say, looking down she smiles shyly and walks off to continue her work, Clark watching her go for a moment before he starts moving the dirty glasses.

Holly returned to him, he poured a few more drinks and then had barely washed three glasses before he heard it. A _whoosh_ and a fleshy _whack_.

It took Clark only a few seconds to drop the towel and stride across the bar, gently motioning Holly out of the way. "Come on." he said, looking down at the man.

"What?" he drawled, beer spilling as he waved his glass around.

"Out. Now."

The man looked back up at him. "Or what?"

Clark laughed, and then grabbed him by the shirt collar, walking him across the room to the front door. The man swings out a couple of times, but never manages to hit anything. He marches the man out the door, down the steps and gently gives him a little shove to get him walking away.

"Walk it off."

The man stumbles around in an arc, taking a few steps back to the bar before Clark sticks out an arm, blocking his path. The man looks down at it, then up at Clark, his whole body wavering. "I'm just trying to have a good time."

"Yes." Clark replies. "And because of you, others in there were not. Now, go for a walk, sleep it off. And I will be here when you return for another good time." The man looked up at Clark indignantly for a moment, wavering on his feet as Clark remained still as a rock.

Then suddenly the man's friends were there, talking and turning him away. Clark remained standing there, watching them leave for a full minute before he turned and headed back inside. Once there he looks up to find Lana hurriedly turning away from him, cleaning up a table as though trying to make herself appear busy.

Clark pays it no attention and moves back behind the bar. The rest of the his work shift passed much without incident, just a haze of pouring drinks, washing glasses, handling of money, and the regular goo-eyes from Lana that she tried to sneak in, everyone letting her pretend that they didn't know.

When the shift was over he walked outside, bag slung over his shoulder, he turned the corner and almost walked right into Lana, who was standing there as though expecting him, staring right up at him. "Yes Lana?" He said, a little hurriedly, but still courteous.

For a response she raised herself up onto her toes, and inched closer to kiss him on the cheek. Already a little shocked he quashed whatever he was feeling so she didn't notice anything by the time she was back on her heels. "You're a good man, Clark Kent. Still that boy who wouldn't fight back, the same boy who refused leave anyone in that sinking bus behind, no matter how he felt about us."

She left Clark as shocked as before, he more or less just felt glad that she had grown out of the bitchy teenager who had once tormented him. He thought about it only a few moments before getting in his truck and driving home.

When he pulled up in front of his home twenty minutes later there were already two cars parked on the gravel. He walks inside to find his mother, Martha – hair still surprisingly red for a woman nearing fifty – almost having finished cooking dinner. "Hey mum." As he kisses her on the cheek.

"Hi honey. How was work?"

"Same old." continuing as he lowers his bag into a corner. "Drinks, money, food, throwing out the drunks. You know, the usual."

His mother looked at him, "You didn't, did you?"

"What? He was asking for it."

"You were careful, weren't you?" Clark just looks at his mother as though it was the most stupid question he had ever heard. In reply she smiles softly and nods. "I worry, is all."

"I know." Clark says, hugging her, "And you're allowed to." There is silence for a few moments as he hugs her, until he pulls back and Martha gets back to the food. "So, where's Chloe?"

"Where else would she be?" And so he walked out the back, and down a dirt path to the barn that had been built on top of the spacecraft.

Inside Chloe was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a laptop on her knees, a handful of small parts spread around her, a cable running from her computer down through the floorboards next to her. "Discover anything new?"

She replies without looking up at him, absorbed in what she is doing. "Always. Pertinent to you? Not really."

"That's all you ever tell me, that it's beyond our level of understanding."

"What else would you have me say? _How_ advanced it is?"

"Well, why not?"

"Because as far as your life goes, the technicals of this pod are irrelevant, what is however, is it's story. I can only tell you somewhat how it was built, but not much else – my dad was the mechanic, I just picked up enough to run my car. Hell, I don't even know what it's made of."

"We've been over this."

"And we'll probably go over it tomorrow or the day after when you ask again." She pauses, glancing at Clark for a moment. "And how about you? What have you been up to?"

"The usual, not much out of the ordinary." He leans back against an upright beam. "Though Lana's getting bolder."

"How so?"

"She kissed me on the cheek."

"Saucy." She says, smiling, "You actually gonna do anything in return, or just leave her hanging for another eight years?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Clark, she's been into you since you pulled her out of the bus." After a few moments of silence Chloe looks up to see Clark looking at the ground, darkness covering him. "What is it?"

"Hm?" Clark lifts his head, coming out of it, stuttering a moment as he thinks, "Well, isn't that reason enough for me just to let it go? I mean, it's not really hurting anyone, is it?"

"Maybe."

"Chloe, she's got a hero complex."

"Well, maybe she wouldn't if you stopped saving her. You'd be surprised what people can do when they have to figure stuff out for themselves."

For a long moment Clark looks at her, typing away on her laptop; the physical embodiment of what she just said. "You staying for dinner?"

She looked up, wide-eyed at that, "It's dinnertime?"

Clark smiles, "Well, mum'd be insulted if you didn't."

"Are you trying to guilt me Clark?"

"Is it working?"

"No," she says, putting the laptop to the side as she rises, "I'm just starving."

Right then there is a glow from beneath the floorboards, Clark looks from it to a stunned Chloe who responds with a shrug of, 'Don't look at me.' Then as Clark moves for the small staircase beneath the trapdoor Chloe squats, looking once more at the laptop screen. On it Chloe sees that a connection has been made, when the only thing it is connected to is the spacecraft. She quickly gets to work trying to find where it came from.

Below, Clark is staring down at a blue hologram that is emanating from the spacecraft, the precise image of the Earth, scaled down to fit in the palm of his hand. A red line runs from Nebraska in the USA, up past Canada and Alaska to the edge of the Arctic. Clark stares at it, he doesn't know what to do.

Upstairs, Chloe has tapped into the imaging system, and sees it on her laptop, already getting it to zoom in on the Arctic to get precise coordinates. It only lasts a few seconds, and then the hologram fades out of existence, the spacecraft once again hiding any sign that it was ever alive.

When he walks back up the steps he finds Chloe already looking at him, smiling excitedly. "Well?"

"Well what?" She rolls her eyes and lifts the laptop up to show Clark the screen, red dot in the Arctic a little north of Alaska. Clark shrugs, "And?"

"And?" Chloe choked, taken aback. "Are you kidding me?" She continues, indignant, "You pester me about this damned thing any chance you get, and now, when something literally falls into you lap you suddenly don't care?"

"I didn't say that!"

"You're sure as hell acting like that!"

"Look, can we just leave it for the moment?"

Chloe rolls her eyes sarcastically, "Sure, you've left it for almost twenty years, what does a few more days matter?"

And then Clark was gone in a blur of speed, leaving Chloe standing there, hands going wide in shock before she shakes her head and follows him out the barn door. When she reached the house she found the food on the table, with Clark and his mother chatting amiably, it was plain enough for her to see that he hadn't said a word about what just happened.

"Hey mum." She said to Martha the moment she could.

"Hi Chloe, food's ready."

"Thanks." She said, taking a seat across from Clark, staring him down. But when Clark refused to say anything she couldn't help herself. "So, an interesting thing just happened."

"Oh really, what's that?" Martha said, sitting down at another side of the table, between Clark and Chloe.

She gave Clark another moment to come clean, but he only looked at her as though pleading for her to not say anything. "Clark's cradle showed that it has something to say after all."

After a moment of silence Martha only said, "Chloe?" Dragging the girl's attention to her.

"Yes?"

"Perhaps a little more plain."

"Okay, right, sorry." Chloe shakes her head, then leans on the table and looks at Martha, "It lit up like a nightclub and spat out global positioning from a transmission it had received."

"Oh." Martha said, lowering the food back to the table, eyes wide as she goes quiet.

"See?" Clark said, "See what you did?"

"What?" Chloe almost shouted, "What could possibly be so devious as to plan to lure you to the Arctic?"

"That's what I'm worried about."

"Are you kidding me?"

"You're saying that a lot lately."

"That's because I'm trying to talk sense with a stupid person."

"Chloe." Martha says quietly.

"I'm not sorry. He is being stupid." She said matter-of-factly, "Why would it tell us where the signal came from? If it was someone, why wouldn't they just connect and follow the signal? Why would it matter to try and bring you to them?" At the same moment that she stopped, Clark looked away and Martha looked at her. "Clark, there is something out there, something that has been waiting for you for a long time, and now it's calling for you. You've been wanting answers your whole life, and now here they are, being offered to you."

"Mom?"

"She's right Clark."

"I'm always right."

Martha shot her a quick look to quiet her before she continued, looking at her son. "This is your chance. We never really discussed any of this, what was there for us to say? We didn't then, and still don't know anything. But now you have a chance to know something, anything." Clark doesn't move, doesn't look at either of them, he just sits there, motionless. "Clark, your father would want you to know."

"It's not like he's here anymore." Neither of the girls had anything to say to that. "The dead don't care, they're dead. Life is for the living, and how they choose to make it, not for the gone to expect us to a act certain way."

Silence enveloped the room, none of them looking at each other. Slowly, Chloe reached for the food, piling her plate high.

The three of them ate in almost total silence, in what felt like the longest meal they had ever shared.

Eventually, most of the food gone, Clark finally apologies. "I'm sorry, about before. It's just..."

"I know, honey." Martha says after he trails off. "It's okay to be scared, the unknown can be that way."

"It's not that." Clark replies, "It's that I'm Clark Kent, and well, what if..."

"Clark, you're my son. It doesn't matter how you came to us, your father and I raised you, so you're ours. Nothing you learn will ever change that, it will simply add to what you already know. And besides, we don't know what's waiting for you out there, it could be nothing."

"Or," Chloe said softly, "It could be everything."


	7. Saviour

A helicopter flew over the snow covered trees, swooping low between the mountains as it swings north-west, a military base revealing itself only a few moments later.

When the helicopter touches down an Air Force Colonel hops out, and is met by another military man the moment he is within earshot. "Sergeant."

"Colonel Wilson, Sir?" The man just off the helicopter nods and hurries by, forcing his underling to follow as he heads toward the command tower. "Though we have been preparing for your arrival we have to delay our deployment. This way please." Colonel Wilson says nothing as he follows the Sergeant inside.

When inside he is lead to a small office where another man sits, just putting the radio down. "Commander, this is Colonel Wilson." the Sergeant introduces.

The Commander sizes him up for a moment before saying, "Quite a lot of stuff you're taking north through my base. Anything you can actually tell me about it?"

"Black Ops." The Colonel replies, "I don't even know what I'm looking for."

"Surely you must have some idea."

"From the men and equipment, some sort of dig site."

"In the ice?"

"Orders are orders." The Colonel looks at him for a moment before pushing on, "I hear you're trying to delay my deployment."

"Not me, Colonel." he replies, "We've got a burning oil rig down south, and since there isn't much to offer from anyone else in the way of help..."

"You need all the help you can get." The man at the desk nods. "What do you need?"

"I've got the five helicopters being emptied as we speak, but currently only three pilots here and fit. And half a dozen men already loading up."

Colonel Wilson smiles for a response. "You've got five pilots now."

Only a handful of minutes later the five aircraft were in the sky, heading south-south-west toward a rising smoke plume out in the ocean. A dozen men are standing on the helipad, engulfed in smoke, nowhere to go. Inside six men are trapped on the bottom of a stairwell, thirty feet above them the room torn apart with no way up, and the door in front of them open only an inch but blocked by a fallen steel beam.

Colonel Wilson flew his helicopter around the oil rig, spotting a couple of men trapped in an upper room. He calls it out to the two men he has in the transport bay, then banks the aircraft through the smoke and brinks it into hover over a cross-beam. As the one of the two men he has is lowered down onto by a cable he sees the two trapped men start to inch out toward him, while down and to his left he sees people on the helipad flood back as the transport helicopter comes in for a landing.

In the stairwell one of the men has a broken leg, and another has broken down in tears, across them you can see the loss of hope. They all look at each other, well and truly believing that this is the end. When suddenly they all look up as they hear a steel _screech_, accompanied by a deep grunt of _argh_, and the door swings back a little bit before there is a _slam_.

One of the men gets up to push the door open the rest of the way as the oil rig trembles around them like an earthquake, threatening to throw him into the door frame as he does so. When the door is open they see that the steel beam is gone, and the hallway beyond is relatively clear, and though the fires are growing they are not overwhelming. The moment after it has sunk in that they might yet live, the man at the door turns, helps up the man with the broken leg as he shouts, "COME ON!" And with another man they lead the way down the suddenly clear route toward another stairwell where they can make their way up.

Outside, Colonel Wilson has nerves of steel as he holds steady while the oil rig begins collapsing around him. One eye constantly on the beams to his right, he sees them start to bent down toward his aircraft as the two trapped man are lead across the beams. "Better haul arse, we could be in serious trouble any second."

"Almost there." comes back across the radio. Not a moment later the Colonel glances down to see the first man getting lashed to the harness and pulled up. He looks to his right to see the beam tremble in his direction. The helicopter never moves as he looks behind him to see his second man pull the harness off the oil rigger and toss it back out. Down and to his left, beyond those waiting to get into his helicopter he sees the helipad, and the transport still waiting there with no one getting inside. "What's going on down there, transport?"

"Supposedly there's still men inside, Sir."

"This thing is gonna crumble any minute." he replies, turning from the second oil rigger getting pulled up to see the beams to his right tremble once again.

Inside, the steel groans and squeals around the six men as they make their way up the rig, the flames crackling and churning, burning hot as they surge and ebb. They somehow manage to stumble through the rig without another incident, and fill with relief when they reach the helipad to see the military helicopter waiting. The six men are halfway to the helicopter when the whole rig trembles and tips slightly.

Colonel Wilson hears the groan and quickly turns to see the beams to his right bend and fall toward him. All he hears in his ear is, "GO-GO-GO!" And he instantly pulls the aircraft to the side, flowing across and then dropping out through the smoke as the steel frame collapses and smashes into the building the two men were trapped in, already forcing that to crumple under the weight as it disappears from his vision, hidden by the smoke.

The six men on the helipad freeze as they see the frames come crashing down toward them. But at the last moment they hear it crash and groan as it comes to a stop, as one they look down to see why, and collectively still do nothing until they hear the man shout, voice strained, "I can't hold this all day!" and they jump into action, hurrying into the transport helicopter.

The moment Colonel Wilson has come clear of the collapsing rig he glances over his shoulder to see the man who had gone down onto the cross-beams just getting pulled aboard by the others. Breathing a sigh of relief he looks ahead and banks around the rig again to join the other helicopters and head back north, when he sees the transport only just lifting off from the helipad. And beyond it, the entire upper frames of the oil rig has collapsed on itself, all falling down onto the helipad, where there is a man standing there, in just his pants, holding it all up with his bare hands.

The man had his back turned to them, facing in toward the oil rig he was holding up above the transport as it pulled away. Shocked, as he was sure everyone else was, he and the other four helicopters just circled until the rig collapsed the rest of the way, falling in a crumbling, burning heap on the man that had appeared from nowhere and stuck around to help. And yet, Colonel Wilson only felt uncomfortable about it as he lead the helicopters back north, away from the smouldering ruin.

Clark lay in the water amongst the flaming debris for what felt to him to be the longest time. He found a calming sense of peace with his ears in the water, hearing the softening crashes and crumbles of the oil rig as it fell deeper and deeper. He even heard a few whale calls getting further away as the sun inched closer to the horizon.

At the Air Force Base, the Commander strolls through the temporary hospital that has been set up for the oil rig situation, not a man among the rescued being allow out of the building.

Colonel Wilson is in a room, typing away at a laptop. Some of it reads: _"...only reason everyone survived is because of this man. Who, I repeat, was able to bear the weight of the majority of the collapsing oil rig, using only his bare hands."_ When the doors open the Commander appears, stepping inside.

Colonel Wilson looks over the top of the computer screen, clearly waiting for the Commander to speak. "Anything you would like to tell me about what happened out there?"

The Colonel goes back to typing on the laptop as he responds. "Zero deaths and no missing have been reported. Beyond that, I could not truly say."

"They say they saw a man."

"Did they?"

"It's from everyone. To a man, they all say that there was someone else." The Commander steps inside more, disappointed that the Colonel does not look at him. "He came out of nowhere, and held up the structure before it would have collapsed, allowing the transport to take off when it otherwise wouldn't have."

"People say a lot of things." On his laptop he opens up an email account and sends the report he just typed to his superiors, then closing the machine. "The trick is sorting out the fact from fiction, Commander. The problem is that people seem to want to blur the line more with each passing year."

"Could you imagine though?" The Commander says, wide-eyed, unable to comprehend, "If a man like that, actually existed?" He puts an arm out, leaning against the wall. "The strength to level a building, with only your hands. Fundamental to your existence, no tools." He looked at the Colonel, meeting his gaze, "Do you think he survived?"

"It is possible." Colonel Wilson said without hesitation, leaning back as he continues, "What concerns me though is that where there is one, there would be more." then after a pause his finishes contemplatively, "Cities would tremble. They would walk as titans."

"We would look so small."


	8. The Missing

Clark steps across the ice of the Arctic, sunlight pouring down onto him. His pants covered in burn holes and tears, but his shirt, coat, boots and backpack all untouched. In one hand he has a GPS locator, and a piece of paper with the exact coordinates of where he needs to be. The coordinates on the locator show that he is getting closer.

He eventually gets to the right place, but when he does there isn't anything there. He looks around in all directions but sees nothing. He checks the locator and he is in fact right on top of it. He closes his eyes for a brief moment, and when he opens them he is looking down, his X-Ray vision showing him beneath the ice. Below him he sees it, a spacecraft, and as he looks up to his right he sees a crack in the ice.

Hurrying over there he finds a thin crevice, and manages to shimmy his way down into the darkness until he loses his grip, and with nothing to plant his feet on he slips and falls, but never hits the ground. When he opens his eyes there is only the light coming through the crack in the ice above him, but it is enough to see the ice floor ten feet below him, not getting any closer. In total wonderment and confusion he looks around, not able to grasp that he is floating. But after a few moments he suddenly drops the last ten feet, hitting the ice hard enough to leave a small crack.

Coughing, he begins to push himself to his feet, only to struggle more and see a green glow emanating from rocks frozen in the wall next to him. Looking from it to his hand he sees his veins bulge and throb and turn a dark green. With a groan he scampers backwards, flipping over he almost lands in a clump of the same rocks, these protruding from the floor. Gazing around he sees the rocks littering the cave, and then his attention turns toward the spacecraft, nestled somewhat snugly in the wall of the ice cave.

He scrambles toward it, slowly getting away from the glowing rocks, but the coughing doesn't stop. When he gets there he sees something akin to a touch-pad by the door, which opens the instant he places his hand on it.

Once inside he drops to his knees, coughing, and the door closes behind him. After a few moments he starts to breathe easier, never looking at his hands as the swelling and throbbing eases and slowly fades. He coughs again, places a hand to his head as he winces, and then rises to look at the interior of the spacecraft.

There wasn't much to speak of, and really, a part of him was rather disappointed with what he saw. There was only three rooms, and by taking one step forward, as he swung his head he could see everything. Three rooms, all connected by the little pathway he stood in. To his left was the cockpit, not all that different from that of a small private jet. To his right was a booth embedded in the wall, big enough for four if they squeezed in tight, and around them was an assortment of machines. And the third room, almost directly in front of him, was little more than another walkway.

But what drew him there was that it was the only part that truly housed anything of any immediate interest; three elliptical indents in the wall of the craft, each no larger than required to accommodate a full grown man, and by the shape and placement what he assumed was a fourth indent, but fitted within was what looked more like a fogged lump of goo hanging in the wall space. He approached, placing his hand on it, but instead of the glass or plastic he expected what he felt was something more akin to a gel. When he removed his hand he saw through it somewhat, enough to make out a young face with blonde hair.

When he inched closer a deep male voice caused him to almost jump out of his skin. "She's not dead." With deep breaths he looked to his left to see Jor-El standing there – to him nothing more than a man of about forty something.

Clark, trying to hold himself steady stumbles over a handful of questions almost incoherently, the only ones coming out that make sense being, "Who is she?" and "Is she okay?"

Smiling, Jor-El answers him, "She is fine, only sleeping. Though if the machine is functioning properly, she should wake soon." He takes a step forward, as though studying the stasis chamber. "She was supposed to have woken long ago. But the craft malfunctioned on entry to this planet's atmosphere, and I was forced into the background as it tried to conserve what energy it could. In effect saving her life." Then his attention turns to Clark, "How did you get here? The air outside is unbreathable."

"The rocks?" Clark responds, getting a nod from Jor-El, "More allergic than anything." then, a little confused he says, "Those meteor rocks are all over the town I grew up in. So much that my parents have quite a collection in a dumpster." But then Clark goes quiet, having implied the plural.

"Curious." Is all Jor-El responds with.

"Who are you?" Clark repeats, but before waiting for an answer he pushes ahead, "You're not really here, are you?"

"Very much so." Jor-El responds, almost musing, "But also quite true. I am more or less nothing. Merely a remnant of a time long gone." He reaches out an arm and it goes right through Clark, unflinching as he stands there, watching it.

Clark steps forward now, more curious, "A hologram, of an AI program built into the computers."

"An AI?' Jor-El says, a little amused. "No. I am the consciousness that resides within the data space of this vessel." Then he steps through the wall of the craft to the pathway, but still seen by Clark. Pointing to the cockpit he continues, "Over there on the console is a crystal." Clark follows the instruction, spotting the crystal jutting out of a slot. He looks back over his shoulder to Jor-El, "You insert that into the pod you arrived here in, and all the knowledge of Krypton will be opened to you."

Clark looks to the crystal, but without touching it he looks back and asks, "You know me?"

"Of course," he sees the old man respond, "I analysed you as you entered. No creature may safely enter a craft such as this without first being Kryptonian, or second, having the permission of it's owner."

Clark reaches out and removes the crystal, Jor-El disappearing the moment the crystal leaves the slot in the console. Completely unaware that he is now alone he looks curiously at the crystal before he says, "But who..." looking up he sees the older man gone, but he finishes slowly, "...is she?" Though no response is forthcoming. He looks at the crystal in his hand, thinking, and mutters, "Kryptonian."

Then there is a thud and a splash, and Clark hurries toward it, finding Kara splayed out on the floor covered in liquids, all that remains of the gel is a thin lattice that hangs from the wall, falling apart and decomposing before his eyes. He turns her over, and is a little surprised at how young she is. When her eyes don't open he uses his X-Ray vision to see that her heart is beating, though her breathing is ragged, almost trembling.

She opens her eyes for a brief moment, dazed as she looks up at him. Confused she mutters, so softly Clark barely hears; "Uncle Jor?" Then her head droops back as she passes out.

He looks at the crystal, shoves it in his pocket and scoops Kara up in his arms. He goes to the door and hesitates a moment, looking down at the girl. After a moment of thought he adjusts, using his left hand on the touch-pad to open the door, and then instantly covering her mouth as he holds her head to his chest. She lay there limp as he charges out of the spacecraft, ignoring the dim green light as he hurries to stand beneath the crevice, and looking up he pushes down, hard, covering Kara with his body as he jumps up, ice shattering as he makes his escape.

* * *

The sun low on the horizon, Colonel Wilson stands in an open tent, not quite the focal point of on an encampment on the ice, a pair of helicopters coming in to land beside three more. He has a phone in his hand, speaking only loud enough that he is heard above the noise. "Yes, I understand we're behind, I'm sorry for deciding to put us behind by doing the right thing _and_ following my orders yesterday." There is a pause and then he continues, "Of course you didn't know about it _sir_. And all due respect Mr Moneybags, I don't report to you." Another pause, "Well these are the things we must be aware of. A man such as yourself must surely understand such things. I'm sure the White House would be willing to reimburse you the few precious hours of time you lost." A scientist comes rushing over to him, and the Colonel holds up a hand for just a moment, "I was under the impression this is a joint venture. If that is so then there is no one else out here looking for anything. Now, I believe I need to get us back on schedule, _sir_." He hangs up the phone and looks at the scientist. "Fuckin' corperate execs. Yes?"

"Well, Colonel... uh,sir..." The man stutters.

"Out with it man."

"Well, um, we, ah..." he throws down some papers he brought with him, unfurling a map of the area they are in and readouts of seismic shifts. "We detected something, coming from over here." he pointed to a spot roughly near where Clark found the spacecraft.

"You think it's what we're looking for?"

"Well, uh,sir, not knowing exactly, what, um, we are even searching for..."

"You'd like to at least take a look."

"Ah, exactly, yes, sir."

Colonel Wilson looks up at the horizon, the sun already touching it. "First thing tomorrow a team will be sent."

"Well, ah sir?"

"Yes?" Wilson asked, starting to feel a little impatient.

"Well, it may, ah, be underground."

"Not a problem."

* * *

It is deep into the night when Clark makes it home. He races inside and places Kara on the lounge. Martha had heard him come inside and she walks into the room to see her son.

"Clark, did you find any..." She trails off as Clark turns to look at her, and she sees Kara passed out. "Clark, what...?"

"I found her." Clark hurries out as he rises, walking over to her, he pulls out the crystal, showing his mother all else there was, "There was a space ship, it didn't look too different from the one in the barn, and there was this." holding out the crystal.

She takes it, looking at it, "What is it?"

"I think it's some sort of external hard drive."

It was then that Martha noticed her son's state, his pants torn and burnt. "Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

"Anything else?" He said, thinking a moment, "Right! There was an oil rig on fire. But everyone got out safe enough."

Martha reach out and touches a patch of still wet blood on his chest, "So this isn't your blood then?"

Clark replied with a surprised, "No." and he turned to look at Kara, "It must be hers."

"Who is she?"

"I think, she's like me." He walks over to her and again scans her chest with his X-Ray vision, seeing her lungs had deteriorated since before, more sickly. "I think her lungs are infected." He says, looking up at his mother, "There were those meteor rocks everywhere."

"Clark." She said gently, as only a mother could, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Was I like this?" he asked, concerned.

"Worse."

"Then how did I survive?" he plead, looking up at Martha.

"There were times when your father and I, we didn't think you would. But we eventually figured out the meteor rocks were the cause, and since then we managed to keep you away from it for the most part." She looked from the girl to her son, "You more or less came through it on your own."

"But, I'm still allergic to this day." He continues, "My joints lock up and I feel like my blood boils and clogs at the same time."

"Honey," she says with a smile, "Once upon a time you fainted and never seemed to stop coughing blood."

"I did?"

"Yes. And as severe as your reaction still is, it hasn't been that bad since you were little."

Clark and Martha look to Kara, pale and clammy and sweating as she shakes a little. "I don't even know who she is."


	9. Answers

In the middle of the day, Chloe parks her car in front of the Kent farmhouse. When she gets out she swings a bag over her shoulder, pulling a ringing phone out of her pocket as she closes the car door.

When she looks at the caller she pauses and glances at the house before she leans back on her car, answering. "Yeah?" There is a brief pause, "Is that right?" Another pause, "Of course." And then playfully, "Who do you think you're talking to?" followed moments later by, "And don't you forget it." Then she hangs up the phone and heads into the house.

When she walks into the kitchen she finds Clark there, making a cup of coffee. Without even looking at her he says, "Aren't you supposed to have a job?"

"Nah," she replies swiftly, "they fired me again." As she sits at the counter Clark looks at her, and without him saying anything she gets defensive, "What? If Queen Industries didn't want me rifling through their unmentionables they shouldn't bathe themselves in incompetence." He pours her a cup of coffee, looking at her again, and gets even more, Chloe throwing her hands up in mock exasperation, "Fine! But they'll probably ask me to come back again in about two weeks anyway."

"And what makes you say that?"

She lifts the cup up in both hands, pausing just before her smiling mouth to say, "Because that's how long it was the last two times. And what I did then was way worse." Clark shakes his head as Chloe sips the drink, and turning her head to look around she spots Kara, still asleep on the lounge, sunlight streaming onto her through the window, looking far better than she had the previous night. "Ooh-lah-lah!" she observes, "Who's the blond?"

"No idea." Clark responds, leaning on the counter with one hand as he drinks with the other.

"Nice!" Chloe remarks, lowering her cup to the counter-top as she raises her right palm up in the air, "Up top!" Clark again just looks at her shrewdly, Chloe unable to stop grinning, "Come on!" she insists, "Don't leave me hangin'!" Clark just shakes his head at her and she slowly lowers her arm back down.

As Chloe takes another sip of her coffee she notices the crystal Clark took from the spacecraft, but doesn't mention it directly. Instead she asks, "So, what exactly did you find out there?"

"A space ship, actually."

Chloe's eyes light up excitedly, "Really? Could we go check it out?"

"I wouldn't advise it." He says solemnly.

"Why? Too cold?"

"No, the cave is covered with meteor rocks."

"Oh." She says, a little quietly, her thoughts drifting off elsewhere, "That's a shame."

Just then there is a cough and a groan, the two f them instantly turn to see Kara tossing and rising, clearly still dazed. She looks up to see Clark and Chloe looking at her from the kitchen. She just watches back for a moment, until Clark starts to step toward her, then she pounces to her feet.

The house shakes and the ceiling cracks as Kara _slams_ into it and bounces back down to the floor, breaking the coffee table. Clark freezes, and Chloe jumps a little, momentarily worried until she sees that Kara is more confused than they are, and though she gently tries to push herself to her feet she _whooshes_ through the air, a couple of feet across the room before she steadies herself.

Clark takes a step toward her, raising a hand as Chloe slips off the stool to stand. "It's alright." Clark says gently, Kara's eyes flicking between them, more wary than scared.

And then Martha hurries into the room, "Clark, what is going on?" And she lays eyes on Kara.

The moment Clark looks to his mother is when Kara decides to try and flee, darting a little uncontrolled about the house, bouncing off walls ad furniture until Clark grabs her and sits her down in a cushioned chair beside the broken coffee table. "Just relax." Clark says, letting her go and backing up a little, "We don't want to hurt you."

"Or keep you here if you don't want to." Martha says hurriedly.

"No." Kara says dryly, "Of course not."

"Well," Clark responds, thinking it through, "it's just that you're new here. Surely you need to know a few things first?"

"Maybe." She says, more defensively than anything as she studies the three people in front of her. Martha kneels down beside the girl and starts looking her over, the mother in her still very much apparent. Uncomfortable, Kara says, "What are you doing?"

"Just seeing if you're okay." the older woman replies matter-of-factly.

"You won't be able to help me. Even if there were something wrong." Kara retorts, voice just as factual.

"We won't know unless we try now, will we?" She says, staring into Kara's bright blue eyes.

Somewhat comforted by Martha's gentle nature she mutters softly, "No, I guess we won't."

The calming silence settles everyone for a moment, Chloe coming in for a closer look as Clark stands there. Kara, still a little uncomfortable with the attention, waits for someone else to speak. "My name is Clark Kent. This is my mother Martha, and that's Chloe." he says with little more than a head tilt.

Looking at her all Kara can muster is, "Wife?"

Clark chokes and Chloe laughs. "More like a sister." Clark says, "An annoying little sister."

"Aw, how adorable." Chloe coos patronisingly, smiling, "You think I'm the younger sibling."

He turns to Chloe, a little confused, "You think you're not?"

"Well, I'm not sure exactly. But I think the younger gets told what he wants to hear while the elder give him crap relentlessly."

Clark thinks it over for a minute, then his head sags as he says, "Oh my God. I'm the little brother."

"Cheer up, little fella." Chloe says, enjoying it a little too much as she punches him in the arm. "You learn something new every day."

More confused by their interaction than anything yet that day, Kara looks away, and her eyes find the crystal disk on the counter-top. Warily she eyes everyone in the room, but she waits until, "Well, you seem to be doing much better." Martha says, leaning away, "A few more days away from those pesky rocks and you'll be good as new again."

There is a whoosh of air as Kara has darted across the house, no one trying to stop her as she scoops up the crystal, brandishing it at the others. "This doesn't belong to you!"

"I'm sorry." Clark responds, him and Chloe turning to face her as Martha gets to her feet. "I wasn't stealing, I promise. I was just, curious."

"I saw you in the ship." Kara mutters, "You pulled me out, brought me here. You're Kryptonian, aren't you?"

Both Chloe and Martha look to Clark upon hearing the pronoun. "I must be." Clark says, as though it is of the least importance in the world.

Kara lowers her arm to her side, wary once more. "How long have you been hiding here?"

"All my life." he replies nonchalantly, a moment later looking to Martha.

"Twenty years soon."

Eyes flicking between the two she continues her questioning, "Why are you here?"

"I don't know. I live here."

In a moment Kara has stepped up to Clark, speaking fiercely, "Who sent you? Was it Zod?" But before any of them even have a chance to speak, Kara dismissively takes a step back, deep in thought, "No, that doesn't even make sense, why would he send... Wait, how could he even send anyone?" She shakes her head, as though she's trying to get her thoughts straight, then looks at him from the corner of her eyes. "Who are you?"

"Clark Kent." Is all he says, unsure of how to approach it further.

She places a hand to her head. "I saw you. You're Kryptonian, otherwise, you couldn't have gotten inside the ship." Another blur of movement, and this time there isn't inches between them as she looks up into his face, muttering, "You look like him, and her." Shocked, she darts back halfway across the room as fast as she had forward, "But that's impossible!" She panics, starting to heave, "Kal-El is a baby. No bigger than this!" her hands gestured to show smaller than Clark's chest, eyes glistening as she tries to hold it all in, "He's a baby!" and she collapses to her knees, her eyes shut tight, but doing nothing to hold back the tears as they break, sliding down her cheeks. Distraught, the other three look at each other, not knowing what to do. "Just a baby." Slowly, Kara opens her eyes, but only to look at the crystal disk she cradles in her hands. A moment later she looks up to see Clark having knelt down, touching her shoulders to give what comfort he can. But before he can say anything Kara mutters, "I was supposed to take care of you." Tongue tied, Clark finds nothing to say, "I promised, to watch over you, protect you from a world that wasn't ready, probably hostile. Kal, I promised." and with that her head falls onto Clark's shoulder, "I promised."

Clark puts his arms around her as he glances at Chloe and Martha, "It's okay." is all he finds himself saying.

But it holds no comfort for Kara, still trembling and muttering, "I promised." Until suddenly she shoves Clark to one side, hunching over the other way before she vomits profusely, the splash copping both her and Clark. Clark is shocked, and sees Martha turn away, while Chloe does little more than scrunch her face a little. When Kara has sat back on her heels, breathing far easier than Clark had seen her yet, she looks from the mess to Martha, with a slight hiccough stuttering a rushed, "I'm so sorry."

"That's alright dear." Martha replied, in the voice of a woman who had seen far worse.

"Um, is it too impolite to ask who you are now?" Clark opened his mouth to give Chloe a dressing down, but when he looked at her he only saw her smiling, as though the girl had instantly endeared herself to her.

But before he has thought to say anything else, Kara responds with; "Yes, uh, sorry, I, ah..." a little shaky, pushing herself up with her legs. As her hand closes around the crystal disk she looks at Clark, "Um, do you still have the ship you came here in?"

Before Clark can think about it, Chloe has completely overridden it, "Yeah, come on, this way." already leading them out the back.

One by one they walk into the barn, Chloe leading the way to the trap door. Kara looks around and sees a tarp thrown down in the same corner Chloe moves to – just where she sat before working on a laptop. She looks to Clark and sees that he still isn't sure, so she looks elsewhere until her eyes fall onto the drawing Clark took from Chloe years before, the joy, and the sadness, and the planetoid. Clark touches her on the arm, and a moment later she has started moving again, following Chloe down the stairs.

By the light of an electric lantern, Kara sees Chloe pulling a bunch of mismatched wires out of a panel in the spacecraft. When Chloe looks up she sees anger covering Kara's face, but after a few moments the Kryptonian girl lets it go and walks over to the pod. Standing directly in front of the opened panel she takes a deep breath before dropping the crystal disk into a slot.

"Uncle, I'm so sorry."

"It wasn't your fault, child." the voice speaks first, followed moments later by a bright light directed up from the pod, Jor-El appearing within. "There were, complications."

"But, I promised..." She not once has looked up at the remnants of her uncle.

"I know." He replies, attention totally on his niece for the moment. "We have all sworn to do things we were unable to accomplish at one time or another. Let it go for now, it does not do well to dwell." Now he turns to the others, gaze lingering on Clark a moment before coming to rest on Martha. "I suppose I have you to thank for taking care of my son all these years."

"Yes." Martha stutters for a moment. The shock to Clark is far greater than that to the others. "I'm, ah, Martha Kent."

"Thank you Martha Kent." he responds kindly, "I was once Jor-El."

"I don't understand." Martha says, pondering it a moment. "You're here, aren't you?"

Kara is the one who answers, still not looking at anyone. "Before he died, he instilled his consciousness in this storage device so he may, even in this small way, help and guide us. He's not dead, but neither is he exactly what we would call alive."

"I thought you would have told him by now Kara."

"Jor." she said slowly, finally raising her tear-soaked face to look at the image of her uncle, "it's been twenty years."

"I know child." The sad look Jor-El gives Kara conflicts totally with the conception that he he not alive. "But I am not sorry. The ship malfunctioned, and I had a choice to make. I chose to ensure your survival and to wait. Time was not an issue."

Chloe sees the total lack of thought on Clark's face, and, taking a step forward, decides to ask the proper question herself. "Excuse me, but why is Clark even here?"

Jor-El looks at her for a moment, not speaking before he mutters softly, "Clark." mulling the name, then looking across them all he gives his answer; "Because he is the last son of Krypton. Because in the face of total annihilation there were those who refused to see the right, the truth. Krypton died for it's arrogance. And we with it." He looks to Clark and Kara. "They are both here for only one purpose. So that they may live."

They all think on that for a moment, Kara barely looking over her shoulder to meet Clark's eyes for the briefest of moments. Then Clark looks back to Jor-El, asking, "She- Kara said something about, Zod... is it? Is it because of him? Did he destroy our people?"

_A new Kryptonian spacecraft, this one far larger than the others, with a distinct military design approaches the Earth, heading toward the Arctic above Alaska._

"No." Jor-El responds unequivocally. "No, Zod was a side-effect brought to be because of the problems systematic to our people. When the dark days began to fall Zod did only was he was bred to do. He thrust himself into the limelight and sought to quell the dissension plaguing our world, the frugality the bureaucracy insisted upon even in the midst of uncertainty, and then chaos. A hero to some, a tyrant to others, his only goal was to ensure the survival of the Kryptonian race."

_ Colonel Wilson is setting up a perimeter around the crack in the ice that Clark busted through carrying Kara. Two scientists on lines drop down through the crack when the Kryptonian military vessel appears in the sky, the Colonel and everyone else stopping to watch it come in to land directly next to them._

Chloe, with rapt attention picked up on the word that completely passed the others by. "What do you mean, 'he was bred'?"

_ A hatch opens, the non-distinct humanoids of varying size appear wearing full metallic space suits, each of them dragging a thick cable. The three of them pay the humans absolutely zero interest as they walk over to the crack in the ice and drop down through it._

"On Krypton, at least for five centuries, all children were carefully selected and constructed, always with a purpose in mind, always so they had a role to fill in society; a role they were specifically designed to do. A part in our world that they were perfect for. But in the waning days of our civilisation I saw this for the great flaw it was, itself being the very foundation that festered a disturbing lack of accountability for what was happening around us, fault was either assumed or ignored, and people did not learn as they should. I sought to change that. You, my son, are very much the last son of Krypton, a people who in their own way died long ago."

_The three suited Kryptonians appear in the ice cave, the two scientists turning to stare at them open-mouthed as they stroll up to the spacecraft, all of them jumping up onto the roof._

"And so you what? Left them to die?" Clark says, a little accusative, the memory of how he'd almost left Lana to die strong in his mind.

Kara turns, facing them all with her tear-sodden face, do nothing to dampen her fervent defence of her uncle's actions. "Kal, you have no idea what you're talking about."

_The three Kryptonians move to equidistant points along the roof to place the ends of their cables down, then with the press of a button the cables magnetise themselves securely to the ship._

"Kara, it's alright." Jor says soothingly, Kara's face instantly turning to look anywhere else once more.

_The three Kyrptonians all look to each other, then the smallest one presses a button on their suit's wrist_.

Jor-El continues; "I tried to save them. They wouldn't have it. So I tried to save us, you, your mother and myself. And I could not. And so I saved you, and your cousin. All that was left to me. At least in this small way, I have succeeded."

_The Kryptonian warship lifts off from the ice, hatch still open. Colonel Wilson, watches on with everyone else, struggling to keep their footing as the ice beneath them grinds and smashes, the crack in the ice busting apart to make way for the smaller Kryptonian vessel, dragged by the three cables, the three Kryptonians hunched over on the rooftop holding on_.

With his last words Jor-El has disappeared, the lights on the small pod gone with him. "Oh come on." Clark says, annoyed, "That can't be it."

"Why not?" Kara says softly. "What more do you need?"

"Answers." Clark retorts, the conviction in his voice overriding everything else. "There's so much I want to know."

"We all want a lot of things." Kara mutters, walking past them all back up the steps.

Clark stands there, shocked, and when he sees Chloe's disapproving look he gestures wide, "What?"

"You really don't get it, do you?'

"Enlighten me."

"Eugenics."

"What?"

"Their people literally destroyed themselves from the inside out." Clark, confused, looks at himself before looking back to Chloe, seeing her turned to looking after Kara, "And she lived through it."


	10. Paradise Lost

While everyone else stood stunned at the sight they had just witnessed, Colonel Wilson had immediately grabbed the satellite phone and informed his superior of what had happened. Suffice to say that it had gone about as well as a phone call regarding an extra-terrestrial encounter would be expected to go. The real surprise had been the return call about fifteen minutes later.

Once he had kicked the scientists enough that they woke up to what they had witnessed though, he didn't have too much to do but maintain oversight. They had come looking for the source of a transmission that was beyond known abilities, they had succeeded, in a manner that had far outstretched anyone's expectations.

Whoever had assembled the group of scientists had done a good job, they had already set up zones for the new site by the time he had received the return call.

_ "In light of recent events and new information we are inclined see this in a different way."_

_ "Is that so?"_

_ "Colonel, we will be sending you a piece of information. You will use the scientists at your disposal to delegate and compartmentalise information as best as you can."_

_ "How long do you truly think we can keep something like this a secret?"_

_ "That, for now, is entirely in your hands, Colonel."_

* * *

"So, what you expected then?" Chloe asked softly.

"Honestly," Clark said slowly, "I'm not sure what I expected." The two of them were in the kitchen again, Chloe tossing out her now cold coffee into the sink. The vomit on the floor had been cleaned up, but a bucket remained.

"To be the last of your people?"

"You're my people." Clark said matter-of-factly, drawing a sweet look from Chloe, "They are just, well, dead, I guess."

"Clark..." Chloe turns, filling her previously used cup with fresh coffee.

"Well, how would you want me to react hearing about the deaths of people I never knew?"

"Well, I don't particularly know." Then she turned her head to the window, stirring her coffee, "You do have a chance to find out though." And turning back to Clark slightly she finished the thought, "I mean, they may be dead, but they're not lost. At least, not yet."

"You heard him though, they were a twisted sorry lot who killed themselves."

Lifting the cup in both hands she stop short of her mouth to say, "Clark, if we learn anything from history, it is that _we_ are a twisted sorry lot who destroy ourselves."

"You yourself were disgusted when you heard about them. Seeking to create the perfect people, the ideal man and woman."

"And my response to that would have to be; Hollywood." With Clark finding nothing to say to that, they both dropped their eyes in the silence. Moving to take a seat Chloe said, "Look Clark, I don't think, not really, that we are as different as all that. I mean, you have the strength, the speed, and the fancy vision tricks, but underneath it all, you're really just as emotionally fragile as anyone else."

"Thanks."

"No, you're not hearing me. I've always wondered if that was just because of your upbringing. And though yes, that is a part of it– now, seeing the girl, hearing of the destruction of your race, well, I think that they were all just the same, really. Many historians sort of look at Nazism in Germany as a kind of madness that took hold of the country, the Second World War a result of that madness spreading beyond the control of the sane. The only real reason there hasn't been a large war since wasn't ever because of mutually assured destruction, it was simply because the people in charge weren't insane enough to go through with it. But, what if, something happened? What if, in those times, the psyche of the human race fractured again, like it did in the 30s? I mean, the madness wasn't restricted to Germany, that was simply where it was most profound. The thing is Clark, I do think that what he told us about your... _Kryptonian_ eugenics _is_ horrifying. But in the end, it could have only provided the platform for that madness. I think something went wrong with Krypton Clark, something very wrong. Something that no one could have truly seen coming so that when it did no one could actually accept that it was happening."

"And with the madness manifest in the face of that something they destroyed themselves?"

Chloe nodded. "We, as a race, have done some very horrifying things ourselves Clark, some of the tamest stuff in the last century as weird as _that_ is to say. But would you simply just look at that, and discard us out of hand? Or look at how we got to where we are and not only ask how, but also, perhaps, be a little proud of how far we have come as a species?"

Clark looked at her like the annoying sister she was to him. "You're not gonna let this go until I find out, are you?"

Smiling she shakes her head, "Would you expect me to?"

"You're not as sly as you think."

Lowering her cup, "And yet I'm still the craftiest person you've ever met."

"That arrogance will get you into trouble one day."

"They'll have to catch me first. And when they do, I'll just use that muscle in my head – you know, the one you forget about – to get myself out of it."

They smile at each other for a moment, before Clark suddenly has a thought,"Hey, you don't really think that, right? That she, well, lived through that, do you?"

"Clark..." Chloe said gently, lowering her head, "Are you sure you want to know what I think?"

Slowly, recognising the serious depression in her voice, Clark pushes the question, "Yes."

"Well," Just toying with the cup in her hands for a moment, she thinks before she says, "She was in a kind of stasis right? So, she has been asleep for almost your entire lifespan."

Not really a question Clark confirms anyway, "Yes."

"And the ship you found her in, it had more than one of these stasis chambers?"

"I, think so. I mean, it was more like concaves in the wall, but yeah, there were four of them."

"Then, Clark... I think, she should tell you."

Realising her reluctance, Clark doesn't really push it any further, knowing in his gut that she thought it was something far worse. "Chloe, how could it possibly be worse than just living through all of that?"

A little hunched over her cup Chloe turned her eyes up at Clark, muttering softly, "Because she survived." Taken aback a little, Clark opens his mouth, then closes it again. "I couldn't even imagine the things she has seen."

* * *

Kara Zor-El sat on the wooden fence behind the Kent farmhouse, a field of half-dead, poorly grown corn crop stretching out before her. But her attention was on nothing in particular, just looking across the horizon toward the yellow sun, almost touching the horizon in the distance.

She heard Martha Kent walking up behind her, but paid no attention as the middle-aged woman motherly put a blanket around her shoulders. "It can get surprisingly cold in these parts at night, Clark used to feel it quite a bit." Kara hunched away from the attention, turning her eyes toward the ground. Martha, gently putting a hand on the girl's arm continued with, "You're welcome to stay here for as long as you like. And even after."

She turns and heads back toward the house, stopping when she hears, "Martha Kent?" She turns at the pause, but only sees Kara's back, "Thank you."

"You don't ever need to say that here, you're family."

With that Kara tries to hunch over more, and only succeeds in toppling off the fence. Shocked, Martha hurries over to help as Kara pushes herself up to a sitting position, arms around her knees. Martha kneels down beside her, picking up the blanket once again, stopping short when she hears Kara mutter, "Please, just leave me alone." Martha, shocked, waits a moment, just watching the girl cry, when she sees Clark standing just a few feet away. Then she lowers the blanket over Kara, opening her mouth to speak as she touches the girl on the shoulder again, but Kara speaks first, "Please." And Martha gets up, looking at Clark as she walks by, heading back into the house.

Slowly Clark walks over and sits down next to her, she had already pushed off the blanket. For the longest time he just sits there with her, only starting to speak once the sun fallen halfway out of sight. "It can be quite peaceful here, don't you think?"

"I suppose." Kara replied softly, "A bit uncomfortably warm though."

Clark looked at her quizzically, "How so?"

"Home was... cooler."

After a few moments Clark looks away and asks, "What was it like, our home?"

"Probably a lot like this place." She replies, "But the differences, Kal-El..." When she stops he looks down at her, it takes her almost a full minute to continue, staring up at the sky, the first stars appearing above them, "Wide frozen plateaus that glittered like crystal beneath a large red sun. The Scarlett Jungle, more reds than you can imagine created by scientists only to see if they could, flanking the Xeno River; a running of water so wide you can barely see the other bank as it ran across a continent before flowing into the great still seas. Immense mountains seeming to be made of nothing but thousands of gemstones, and the Hall of Worlds, how I wish you could have seen that Kal-El; a building the size of a city, containing replicas of every known planetoid, the known history of the universe."

"It sounds beautiful."

"For it's part."

Long after the sun has disappeared, they are still sitting there, Clark refusing to leave, if only to sit next to Kara. At one point he asks another question, "Hey, how is it that you can speak English?"

"I can speak some fifty languages with relative fluency."

"Really?"

She nods, "I learned what we knew of this planet on the way here."

"Learned?"

"Raw knowledge, sort of injected into my brain."

"That would be, weird." Clark said slowly.

"You don't really feel it, at least consciously. You went through a similar type of thing on your journey."

Eventually though, Clark managed to bring himself to say what he really wanted. "I can't truly know what you've been through. But you're not alone, okay, I promise you that."

"We all make promises we can't keep." She replied simply.

"But you're here, you're alive. And I can help you."

She looked at him then, for a long time before she responded, "You remind me so much of him, Kal-El. You're father was a good man, possibly the best I ever knew. He has done so much for us, even in death."

"What about you're father?"

With that she turned away, back toward the stars. "He did what he believed was right."

"Oh."

"It's nothing unique. A great many did in the final years."

* * *

The middle of the next day, the sun high in the sky, a man sits on the ledge of a mountain, legs crossed as he looks down on a city below. The man is in his late twenties, wearing the distinctive armour of the Kryptonians that appeared in the Arctic. The city stretches out before him, from suburban neighbourhoods relatively near to the skyscrapers in the distance, his eyes sweeping across to production facilities off to the side, thin smoke plumes rising into the air above them.

The sun shines down directly on him, casting only a tiny shadow behind. His eyes turn down to his hand that he turns up to his face, removing a glove his eyesight shivers and distorts as he finds that he can see through it in flashes. Taking a deep breath he calms himself, focusing in on it until he can switch between seeing his hand and not.

Sweating, he lowers his hand and turns his face up to the sun, closing his eyes as though he were dropping into a meditative trance, soaking in the sun's rays. But before long his chest begins to tremble and he can't sit still, reflexively bringing his bare hand up as he can't contain a severe cough any longer. Not able to breathe easy he looks into his hand, finding a thick glob of blood covering it.

He stares at his bloodied hand for a moment, considering it as he raises his left hand, and with it, a small breathing mask. Covering his nose and mouth, just a few seconds of using it and he is breathing easier.

A gloved hand is placed on his shoulder and he turns to see the face of a woman in her mid-to-late thirties, and by her body shape, possibly the small Kryptonian that went into the ice cave. "We're almost ready." She says through the breathing mask.

The man nods, rising. The woman sees his bloodied hand, and though concerned, she says nothing. "Do we know who it belongs to?"

She shakes her head, and the man looks back to the city, pondering. After a moment the woman asks, "What is it?"

"There is something wrong here." He says, "According to our records this plant should have been ideal to support us, and yet now..."

"It's the atmosphere." The woman responds. "Something must have happened since this world was last catalogued."

"That's not possible." he replies, turning to face her once more, "Faora, this world was not just capable, it was ideal. There is nothing known that could possibly change the atmosphere enough in such a short time that it would become toxic to us– and a mild toxicity at that – while the shape of the planetoid remains the same."

"The natives then."

"I believe so, yes."

"Is it a concern?"

"That they have the ability to make a biological weapon against us?" He pauses a moment, considering, "No, I don't think so. A lethal amount would cause them considerable harm. And on this world, in this particular environment..." he looks to the sun, "they would be foolish to stand against us."


	11. Cultural Divide

A helicopter flies over the snow covered glaciers, coming in to land in Colonel Wilson's compound. A man hops out of the helicopter, running over to meet with the Colonel, who has spotted it and is now waiting.

"Colonel Wilson?" The man who is revealed to be an Air Force Major shouts over the noise. Only at the nod does he continue, "I'm sorry sir, but you have been temporarily relieved of your command here." And he holds out an envelope.

Confused, the Colonel takes it, opening and pulling a letter from within. "Do you know any more of this?"

"No sir," the Major replies, "I was only sent to take over what you were doing here. "Which," he says not very interestedly, "doesn't look all that important, sir."

The Colonel looks at the letter for a minute before facing the Major once again, "Well Major, they are all yours." The men salute each other, and Colonel Wilson heads straight for the helicopter.

The moment he is on board the helicopter lifts off, turns, and heads back the way it had come.

* * *

Chloe is once again in the barn, sitting with her laptop on her legs and a few pieces of the small spacecraft spread around her, when Kara walks in. She looks at Chloe, clearly hacking into the ship, and is not pleased.

"What do you think you are doing?"

"Just trying to learn what I can."

Kara walks over and sees all the mismatching wires and the seemingly random parts spread around. "You must have been at this for some time."

"Five, no, almost six years now." Chloe sees the disapproving look and pauses a moment, "Is that a problem?"

Kara, for her part just looks at it, not really knowing what to say anymore. "Once, I would have said yes. To an extent, I still do."

"I'm sorry, I'll stop, if you like."

After a long moment Kara looks at her, and once again, she just seems sad. Turning away she says, "No, it's alright. There used to be, laws, against such things, that's all." Chloe nods, but Kara just wanders this way and that, looking around. Among other things, her eyes falling on the drawing Chloe made years ago. "So, how far have you gotten?"

"Not very." Chloe says without looking up. "I've managed to connect the computers, but figuring out the program code could take a lifetime. And it's not as though we can just ask for help from anyone here."

"Because is not from Earth?"

Chloe looks up from what she is doing, studying Kara, "You said there were laws against this. I presume that meant someone not from Krypton accessing your race's technological advancements?" Kara turns to face her, nodding. "The people of this world, they still question whether or not they're alone in the universe, the only intelligent life in all of existence. How do you think they would react, if they found something like this? If they knew that not only were they not alone, but that there was someone like you, out there?"

"Someone like me?"

For a long moment, the girls just look at each other, then, in a flash Chloe has thrown a pocketknife at Kara, who, faster than the eye can see has bent away from the weapon, and then snatches it out of the air next to her face, by the blade. Unperturbed but confused, Kara turns back to Chloe, who rises, walks over to Kara, retrieves her knife, blade now bent, and gives herself a little knick on her forearm. "Someone like you." As she walks back to her computer Kara looks at her hand, where she caught the knife, to see herself entirely unscratched.

As Chloe gets back to what she was doing Kara just continues to look at her for a time, then, glancing at the drawing and back she asks another question. "What exactly is your relationship to Kal-El? You appear significantly different to Martha Kent."

"We were in school together, both outcasts, of a sort." Chloe looks at Kara, saying, "It is more, traditional here now for someone to get married nearer thirty, though it is now a matter of choice more than anything."

"So you would?" Kara asked a little uncertainly, and uncomfortable.

But Chloe just laughs, "No, they're the family I didn't even know I was missing, is all. And, not knowing what his name was, Martha and Jonathon called him Clark." But noticing the tone in her voice asks a question of her own, "Would it have been a problem if I were to marry him?"

Though the disapproval clear on her face Kara says nothing for a long moment, before turning away and shrugging. "Before, the answer was obvious. But now, I just don't know."

Kara steps away, just wandering when Chloe says, "I'm Chloe Sullivan. Chloe, just, call me Chloe."

Turning back to her a moment Kara considers the name before responding, "Chloe. Hello, I'm Kara Zor-El.

Smiling, Chloe says, "It's nice to meet you Kara Zor-El." And turns her head back to her laptop, but only for a moment before her fingers freeze on the keyboard, "Wait, you're Clark's cousin, right?"

"Correct. Our fathers were brothers."

Chloe nods, as though it was what she thought, "And his name is Kal-El?"

"Yes."

"Right, so his parent's named him Kal, and your family name is El?"

Slowly Kara says, "Yes." not having any idea where Chloe is going with it.

"Then why Kara _Zor_-El?"

"It's was my father's name."

At that Chloe shakes her head in confusion. "So, what was Clark's father's name?"

"Jor."

"So wouldn't he be Kal _Jor_-El?"

Now Kara is also confused, "Why would the son take his father's name?"

"Well, why did you?"

"Because I'm a daughter." she said, completely coherent, the concept just the way things are for her.

But Chloe, even more confused queries further, "So, _all_ daughters take their father's _first name_ as well as their _family_ name?"

"Until she were married, yes."

A dark expression on her face Chloe assumes, not really a question, just hoping for an answer that she would like, "When she would take her husband's first name instead?"

"Yes."

"So Clark's mother?"

"Lara Jor-El."

Chloe turns her head away, squeezing her eyes just to try and grasp it all as she says slowly, "That is so, fucked up."

"Excuse me?" Kara asks,stepped forward a little confused.

"Let me ask you something else." Chloe redirects, trying to momentarily forget about all of that, "Yourself, you know what you look like, physically I mean. Are you and Clark, well, average for a pair of Kryptonians?"

"What do you mean?"

"Physically." Chloe says, gesturing a little, "Height, body shape, hair and eye colour. Are you and he average of what one would expect a pair of Kryptonians to look like?"

"More or less, I guess." Kara responds slowly, becoming more confused by Chloe the longer she speaks with her, "I'm still not too sure."

"Okay, for a man, do they come much larger than Clark?"

"They can, just as a man could be much smaller."

"How much?"

"I don't understand."

"As small as you?"

Confused Kara jerks a little, "That would be ridiculous. It would be as weird as a woman being the size of a man."

"Okay." Chloe says, almost pointedly as she moves to the next thing, "And hair and eye colour? Skin tone?"

"All kinds of colours."

With that Chloe stands, pulling out her phone and flicking through it, bringing up a bunch of photos to show Kara, all the differing races and colours of the people of Earth. To which Kara can only look on, stunned. Eventually he girl stammers, "That is, amazing. Weird, but just, wow."

"Yep, that's pretty much what I figured." Then she finds a picture with three people of differing heights. Pointing to the smaller girl she says, "She is about my height," then to the taller, "and she is about Clark's." the last person was a four-and-a-half foot tall male dwarf with a beard. "And he, is older than both of them by some nine years."

Stunned, Kara just stands there, mouth open, nothing to say. As Chloe walks back to her computer Kara repeats herself quietly, "Just, wow."

Right then, Chloe's phone rings in her hand. With a glance she checks who it is and answers immediately, "What'ya got for me ace?" She slows down her walk, standing above the laptop, "Huh, is that so?" She glances at Kara, who is still coming to terms with the pictures she just saw, "No, shouldn't be a problem." followed only a moment later by, "Wait, what?" turning away from Kara, and the tone of her voice dragging Kara's attention to her. "Well, I don't really think..." as she turns the laptop with a foot, looking at the screen she freezes, suddenly really concerned, "Okay, could be a problem. No, no, just wait for me okay. I'll call you back." she hangs up the phone. She meets Kara's eyes for a moment before she says, "So, um, Kara, two questions. What are the odds that you and Clark aren't the last Kryptonians alive in the universe? And if you weren't, would that be a good or bad thing?"

Kara, staring at Chloe with sudden fierce attention says only, "Why?"

Chloe for her part, turns the laptop around further to show Kara the screen, a connection having been made to Clark's pod from a ship that is coming ever closer.

* * *

A man in a suit is in an interrogation room with a man in military garb. The military man runs his hands the rest of the way down his face as he says, "Yes, I stand by everything I have reported on. And I have never seen anything like it before."

"The man on the oil rig." The man in the suit says, looking at the Colonel. "The strength to literally hold up the rig with his bare hands. Well, I'll just have to say that we're lucky he showed up to help rescue the trapped men."

"You made me go over it a dozen times, just so you could draw that conclusion?" The Colonel says, frustrated.

"Yes." Is the simple reply, dropping the file down. "Now, what about the spacecraft?"

"Spacecraft?" The Colonel says, playing the fool.

"Are you really doing this right now?" When the Colonel says nothing the man in the suit sighs rather melodramatically, pulling out a phone and dialling a number. He doesn't wait for the answer before he hands it over.

The Colonel picks it up to his ear, still having to wait a few moments before the person on the other end picks up. "Yes?" It is the same voice from when he was speaking with his superior.

Confused, "Sir?"

"Colonel Wilson?"

"Yes Sir."

"Tell him everything you know. This is the man we have assigned to deal with the problem, and you are to provide him with everything he requires of you. I am sending you confirmation now."

"Yes sir." and the phone hangs up immediately. He tosses the phone back to the man in the suit, pulling out his own phone to wait. Only a few moments later there is a message, and the Colonel opens it to read a string of numbers, satisfied he looks back to the man in the suit.

"Well?" The man says a few moments later.

"There were three of them that we saw, at least one more remained inside the vessel to pilot."

"And further estimate on numbers?"

"At least four." The Colonel says concisely. The man in the suit nods with an approving smile, waiting for him to continue. "The three that emerged, went down into the cave, and came back out on top of the vessel they came to retrieve."

"On top of?"

The Colonel nods. "Standing, holding only the attached cables for support."

"Had quite the run in these last few days." The man says curiously, more to himself than the Colonel.

"Do we know who they are?"

"Would aliens be too blunt?"

The Colonel waits a few moments, realising for the first time just how deep in this stuff the man across from him is. "Are these three people the same as the one from the oil rig?"

The man thinks for a moment before answering, "I'm sorry Colonel, that's too speculative for the moment."

"Do we know who that man is?"

The man in the suit looks to the Colonel, weighing the options before answering, judging the man sitting across from him. "We have a few ideas, but nothing concrete."

"So he's been here for some time then." The Colonel sits back, really thinking on that.

"Hiding among us, yes." He says, as though he were completely unconcerned by it. "No, it's these newcomers that have us worried."

"Alien lifeforms." The Colonel says slowly, "They revealed themselves to us, like we didn't matter."

The Colonel looks up to find the man in the suit studying him once again, weighing him, "Such a big thing for us, is a completely irrelevant event to them. You were there Colonel, what was your impression?"

He thinks for a long moment before he answers as simply and concisely as he can. "They're strong. And in their eyes, we don't matter."

"And should we?"

The Colonel blinks at that, not quite grasping it. "I find that, rather insulting."

There is a knock on the door, as another man, this one from the Air Force Base that was the relay point earlier before the Colonel went north, pokes his head in. "Um, sirs, something is happening right now. And I was, well, informed by the Commander to retrieve you." and then he's gone.

The man in the suit turns back to the Colonel, waiting just a moment before standing. "Well, a thought for another time then, Colonel."


	12. How Few Remain

Clark stands out the front of his house, staring up at the Kryptonian warship as it descends toward him. Behind him Martha shuffles out of the house, starring up at it also. She comes down to stand next to him, the two of them sharing a look for a moment, and then Clark turns his head toward the barn, much nearer where the warship is coming down, to see Kara emerge, helping Chloe against the buffeting winds.

When the ship touches down the winds disappear, and all four of them turn to look at it as a the hatch opens, five figures emerging from within. all wearing breathing masks.

Kara is coughing somewhat, looking a little pale and clammy. Chloe takes a few steps away from the girl and keeps looking to the ship.

The younger Kryptonian leads the way, the woman at his side they momentarily, taking stock of thee people waiting for them. The younger man takes one look at Kara and immediately walks in her direction.

They all stand motionless, waiting and watching until Kara recognises him, eyes widening as she starts shrinking away. Clark spots this and starts moving over, until he grabs Kara by the arm, then Clark hurries over, putting his hand on the man's shoulder. The man releases Kara, putting his arm out and throwing Clark into a stumble. When he grabs Kara again Clark goes to dart in, only for Faora to get there sooner and shove Clark to the ground.

Faora looks at Clark, seeing him unharmed by her action, considering. As Clark watches the man take Kara's arm with one hand, and plants a device on her with his other, Kara not even attempting to fend it off.

The man looks at a screen on the device for a few moments, and then to Kara. "Kara Zor-El," he says, "I am relieved to have found you. Where is it?"

Plainly scared, and still looking sickly, Kara points to the barn. The man looks to it, and then lifts a second breathing mask, pressing it to Kara's face and stepping back a little to converse with his men, including Faora who pulls away from Clark.

Clark gets up, pulling Kara away a little as she breathes almost gratefully into the mask. "Is that Zod?" Zod and Faora move into the barn, pausing at the entrance for Faora to point him out to Zod. Kara nods, staring at him over the mask.

Clark looks to Martha, who takes a step toward him until he shakes his head, and then he meets Chloe's eyes who is watching everything in a stern silence.

Zod and Faora walk through the barn, lift the trapdoor to see it below in the darkness, half-pulled apart. Following the cables they see them connected to another device. Zod and Faora share a look before leaving it and returning outside.

"Kal-El." Kara almost whispers to him, "Do not trust them. They do not have it in them to be honourable here."

Before he can say anything Zod and Faora have returned, and are approaching him. Zod grabs his arm and uses the same device on him that he had on Kara, only this time getting no biological match. Confused, with a quick check he is confirmed as being Kryptonian, but there is no match in the device. Zod puts it out of his mind for the moment. He removes his breathing mask, letting it hang a few inches from his mouth as he addresses Clark. "My name is Dru-Zod." Clark is surprised immediately by how young Zod appears, only a few years older than himself. "All that you see here is the last of the once mighty people of Krypton. In such dark times this is truly a blessed day for our fading race. To find not one, but two more who escaped the cataclysm."

When he stops Clark looks at him for a few moments, until the silence becomes slightly awkward and it is clear he may be insulting them. "I am Clark Kent."

Zod, surprised for a moment looks around, and then says, "What is your real name, Clark Kent?"

"Clark is his real name!" Martha shouts, frightened and concerned.

A larger Kryptonian darts toward Martha, faster than the eye can see, but long before he gets there Kara has crossed the distance, dragging Martha back and pulling the mask down she whispers in her ear. "Please, you must keep quiet." Martha looks at the girl, now only pale rather than sickly, and surprised at the action holds her tongue.

Zod however looks from Martha to Clark and asks, "This woman raised you?"

"She did." he replied cautiously.

"Then she has our thanks," Zod said with a smile and a shrug, speaking to the rest of the Kryptonians, "and she shall not be harmed by any of us." The large man who moved to do so now steps back, Faora watching everything just as Chloe is, eyes not missing a thing. "But she did speak out of turn, rather disrespectfully, purposefully not telling me what I wished to know."

"Clark _is_ my real name."

Zod glances to Kara and back to Clark, more cautiously diplomatic he continues, "Then you have been here longer than I thought. You have my respect for standing by what you know, Clark, but we are you people. We are all we have left of each other."

Clark looks around at them, "Just five?"

"Three more on the ship."

"Ten."

"We have scoured the galaxy. Many other people did not take kindly to our people, many for past wrongs, very old grudges that should have long since passed them by. It appears it did not take long for us to become a hunted people." With that Clark is now much more sympathetic to them, with a glance to Kara he hears Zod ask again, "But you still have not answered my question."

Kara, still scared pulls the breathing mask down, calling out, "He's Kal from the house of El! Son of Jor and Lara."

"Kal-El?" Clark turns to see Zod positively beaming, almost like he is seeing an old friend. "I knew your father well. So few believed him when he foresaw our home's destruction was inevitable."

"You knew my father?"

"I was one of the few who tried to help. When the Council refused to believe him and started rounding up his followers, I was the one who was dispatched to see it done. But your father talked true and clear, and when I opened my ears he opened my eyes, and I saw the the only reasonable course of action was to overthrow the Council so that the evacuation of our people could be seen through. Sadly however our people fell into chaos, and so many died on the fields of Kandor, the great city perished with it when the Council saw fit to exterminate their opposition. And after, I could do nothing. I could only conclude much later that the Jor-El also was thwarted in his attempt to escape the impending doom."

"And so you came here for me?"

"My ship detected a Kryptonian distress signal coming from this world. I merely sought to investigate. I had no clue as to what I would find here." Smiling he almost reaches out a hand to Clark, "And now you and your cousin can join us in our search for home."

"But you said Krypton was destroyed."

"And it was. Deservedly so. But it is not beyond us. In the years since my return my people sifted through the rubble of all that remained of our civilisation. They found crude remains of our birthing chambers, but not having the necessary reproduction knowledge or will to do what needed to be done they found instead they had remains of my blood cells from long before the collapse of Krypton. And having followed me through the war they brought me back."

"Brought you back?"

"As best they could." Zod said, nodding, "It is our task to ensure our people's survival, I cannot say they did wrong, Kal-El. Though the process creates inherent weakness it was what was necessary for the moment. If you judge otherwise I submit myself to the punishment of your choosing."

"Me?" Clark says, dumbfounded. "Why me?"

"Why because you are the son of Jor-El. The last hope of our people." Zod stares at Clark for a long moment, until he too becomes similarly confused, "You do not understand?" Clark shakes his head, "I have done all that I could for my people, I always have and always will. But it is not my place to lead them into their future, it is yours, Kal-El. Seeing you standing here, I know it for certain."

Confused, Clark just looks around him, "You didn't answer my question."

"Forgive me." Zod says, almost hurriedly, still confused as to why he has to spell it all out. "Jor-El is the man who sought the salvation of our people. And here I find that though he is lost to us, he has still provided. There is no doubt in my mind that when he saw that there was no chance for Krypton's survival he made a chance for the future, a boy to carry on his great works. A technician like himself to oversee the recreation of our people."

"Technician?"

"Yes, an engineer and scientist." With the continued confusion Clark glances over his shoulder for the briefest of moments, Zod slowly reaching out, "The pod you came in is in pieces. That _was_ you?"

For the longest time no one says anything, Zod and Faora looking at each of them in turn, Zod's attention eventually falling to Chloe. The next moment Faora standing right over her, "You?" she accuses, furious. Chloe tries to back away, but Faora is insistent. "You would dare to touch the technology of the House of El?" And then Farora has grabbed her arm, holding her in place with a grip that threatens to break her, "You dare search for secrets that do not belong to you!"

"Let go of her!" Clark screams, jumping three steps before Zod is suddenly in front of him again, between him and Chloe.

A hand out, he speaks simply,stating facts. "Do not approach Kal-El. She has sinned against us."

"I allowed her to do it. If she's at fault than so am I." Clark begs.

A deep frown appears on Zod face, and he lowers his arm, but continues to bar the way, "By the laws of our Council of old, you are. But it is a slight I am willing to forgive, do not make it more difficult on yourself."

Chloe turns her arm in the grip, taking a hold of Faora's,who is trembling a little, starting to sweat behind the mask. A confused frown of her own, Faora grabs Chloe's neck with her other hand, lifting her into the air, Chloe's left hand coming up and slapping into Faora's face, trying to push her away, the Kryptonian paying it no attention.

Kara jumps into action, letting the mask Zod thrust at her fall to the ground, but is caught well short, grabbed from behind and held back by the larger man who went for Martha previously. "Kal!" she screams, "They're going to kill her!"

Shocked, Clark looks, at Zod, "What... why? What is the meaning of this?"

Zod again replies simply, explaining the way of things. "Our technology cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of lesser beings, it is beyond them and they will mishandle it."

"But she's my friend!"

Zod is shocked for a moment, but ultimately dismisses it. "Perhaps, but you are too long apart from us, Kal-El. She knows things she cannot be allowed to know."

Clark looks beyond Zod as Chloe is choked, Faora's fingers gauging into her throat, but somehow, struggling more the longer she tries. Faora has started to look sickly a little, and twists her face around as Chloe continues to palm and scratch at her face. "This isn't right Zod!" Clark shouts.

"Yes, it is. These lifeforms haven't even progressed to be capable of exceeding the improper breeding brought upon them by hormone-plagued minds, what hope do they ever have to understand us?"

Then Faora twists Chloe's arm more, and there is a stifled, gargling scream, followed by suddenly Faora's breathing mask being ripped free of her face. The Kryptonian pays it no attention aside from a slight shake of the head, until Chloe has flicked her arm, a tiny cloth bag whipping Faora in the face.

Faora pauses slightly, staring at a face full of green dust. She breathes in, struggles and tries to breath more, then instantly drops to the ground and begins convulsing, both her and Chloe rolling and coughing on the ground.

Everyone stands by, shocked at what has happened to Faora. Kara however, takes her chance, throwing her head back she breaks the breathing mask of the big man holding her, getting him to reflexively release her. In a fluid whirl Kara has spun and laid the big man on his back, pounding into him, intent on keeping him down. The last two men have jumped to his aid however, hauling Kara off him, the girl just keeping her feet as they wail on her.

It barely takes Clark longer than that however to get to her side, with one punch sending one of the men flying one way, barely a meter wide of Martha as he _shoots_ past the house and over the fields, then grabbing the other and throwing, soaring into the sky in a long arc. Clark stands there, shocked for a moment as he looks at his hands, in which time Kara has darted over to Chloe, pulling her up, and already coughing herself. The moment Chloe is on her feet she starts pushing Kara away from that spot, back toward the breathing mask she dropped earlier.

Clark looks from the girls to Zod, breathing mask once more over his face as he carries Faora in his arms back aboard his ship. Kara takes a few breaths from the mask, looking at the ship. Then she sees the man she laid on the ground, and grabbing him she spins, hurling him at Zod's ship, in a flash smashing into it with the force of an explosion.

Shocked, Clark grabs Kara's shoulder, spinning her he yells, "Why did you do that?"

Without hesitating she says, "Attack your enemy when they are weak. Don't give them a chance to recover."

"What are you talking about?" Clark shouts his response, "Zod isn't our enemy."

At that Kara rolls her eyes as though she's talking to a naive child, "Oh believe me, he is. And at the very least he will be theirs." she nods to Martha and Chloe, the older woman already fussing over Chloe, still coughing and cradling a purple arm.

Turning back to Kara he begins to say, "Look -_hwp_!" but is cut off abruptly as the Kryptonian he punched away comes diving in, crashing into him and sending them both tumbling over the ground as they disappear from the other's sight.

Kara looks from where Clark disappeared to Zod's ship, wind starting to gust around them as it begins to rise into the air. Kara turns away from it and in a blur of speed darts after Clark.

Chloe with her good hand pulls out her phone, pressing one button she raises it, Martha more concerned with her arm, she pays it little attention until Chloe says in a breathy voice, "Yeah, we got a _big_ problem." And confused Martha looks a sad, apologetic Chloe in the eye. "Oh, I'm sure you could just run a generic search on Smallville any time in the next ten minutes or so."

The man who Clark threw away _slams_ into the ground, stepping away from the cracks at his feet me moves toward Chloe. Chloe, in turn, hangs up her phone and steps forward, pushing a hesitant Martha behind her. "You have committed a grievous crime against us, little earth girl."

"Oh, trust me," Chloe says with a smile and a swagger, though one arm hangs almost limp at her side, "You don't want any of what I am right now."

The Kryptonian stops in his tracks, hesitant. "You cannot hope to stand against us."

Utterly serious Chloe stands firm, "Why don't you ask the woman about what happens to someone who tries to murder me."

"A simple trick. You have played your hand, it will not work twice."

"Come on then." Chloe says arrogantly. Immediately after which there is an explosion from the direction Clark and the other man tumbled in They both glance that way, then look back at each other, "Or of course, you could run and help your friend."

The man stands there for a long moment, staring at a smiling Chloe, then says, "I'll be back for you, _girl_." and then he darts away toward the explosion.

Not a moment later Chloe has dropped to the ground, good hand cradling her limp, purple arm, smile completely gone from her face. "No, you won't." she whispers, Martha moving close to her once again.

In Smallville, Clark is pushing himself to his feet on the street as the Kryptonian man steps toward him through petrol-fuelled flames all around them, the petrol station a burning ruin behind him. He grabs Clark, lifts him up with one hand and punches him with his other, sending Clark flying back and _crashing_ into a brick wall behind him, brick, concrete and dust billowing out around him as he hits.

Without any sign of pain Clark pulls himself out the wall, the Kryptonian slightly hesitant as he watches Clark approach, then jumping at him. Clark dodges the first strike, throwing a punch of his own, only for it to be blocked, and then a foot to come flying around, slamming into his side and knocking him away, the concrete ground cracking as he tumbles over and over for almost a dozen meters before planting his foot out to stop himself, creating a crevice in the footpath as he comes to a stop just short of a civilian, a cloud of dust popping up around him as he launches himself back at the Kryptonian.

Clark tackles him, pinning him to the ground to pound into him several times in his chest, the man's military armour breaking apart at the blows. Clark goes for his face, the man dodging the first as it slams into the road, tar exploding around them, then catching a second punch, stopping it just short of his face in an arm, trembling as it struggles to hold Clark's strength at bay. Confused and annoyed, the Kryptonian man punches Clark in the belly with his free arm, followed quickly by a blow to his jaw, throwing Clark up and back, and in a blur of speed he has jumped up to catch Clark's feet and drag him down, _slamming_ him into the road in another explosion of dust.

The Kryptonian looks up for a moment at some of the people who have watched on, open-mouthed at them, some others just coming out to see what is happening. Then he looks down to see Clark only slightly ruffled by their encounter thus far, he lifts his foot and brings it down heavily, Clark catching the boot in both hands, a gust of wind flying out in all directions from the force of the blow, Clark being pushed further in the ground though he holds the foot back with seemingly only moderate effort. The Kryptonian has only a moment to look confused before in a flash of speed he is _whipped_ away, and Clark quickly jumps up to watch as he crashes into another building.

Inside the building the Kryptonian grapples with a blond blur amongst the haze of dust and debris, eventually falling apart to find it was Kara, now standing determined in front of him. The two of them go for each other at the same time, and though Kara is somewhat faster, the man is the stronger, and Kara fights to this, twisting and turning and dodging carefully to get close enough without getting pummelled, the two of them wrecking the building irrelevantly to a chorus of screams.

And then Clark is there, pulling them apart and throwing the Kryptonian soldier back out into the street, the tar cracking as he rolls along it just as it had for Clark only moment before. He turns to speak to Kara but she has already followed the man out into the street, jumping for him in a high arc, dropping a knee toward his head. The Kryptonian turns and catches her knee, rolling and throwing her behind himself, sending her toward a truck, which she spins, landing on the side like a cat, tipping the weight a little until she launches herself off it back at the Kryptonian, sending the truck and it's occupants toppling over.

She goes at him fist first, which he leans back from, only for her knee to come following through, slamming into the side of his head. Kara lands as she did on the truck, only this time on the cracked and crumbling road, turning to face her opponent when the second Kryptonian soldier comes out of nowhere and with a heavy blow his fist slams into her face, sending her sliding across the road, crippling a street-light and tumbling into the edge of a building with a crack, where she stops, momentarily unmoving.

Clark pauses as he sees her laying motionless, then looking to the two Kryptonians, both turning to look at him, one rising and the other disregarding Kara. Clark looks back at his cousin as she lay there motionless, and remembering what they had almost done to Chloe as well, the rising anger becomes clear on his face.

In a blur of speed he has rushed to the nearest Kryptonian, the one who had been picking himself up, and has hit him before he could react, a fist to the chest which sent him soaring into the sky, knocking a chunk out of the corner of a concrete roof as he flies away.

Immediately shocked at the destruction Clark stops and looks to his fist, and the other Kryptonian pounces on the opportunity, barging into Clark and the two of them rolling in a brawlish wrestle across the ground, the road being torn apart by their smallest of actions. Clark finds the upper hand, pinning the larger Kryptonian and with one punch he crumples his armour at the shoulder, and though his next blow is again caught by a hand, this time the hand is slammed into the ground and the Kryptonian screams through the mask.

Kara pushes herself up a little, blood dripping from her mouth. She rolls her tongue around and spits out a thick red clump, achingly turning her head to see Clark on top of one of the Kryptonians, the other nowhere to be seen. And all around her, complete destruction, many humans screaming in pain, fear, or just running to get away.

The Kryptonian beneath Clark stifles his pain, getting increasingly angry, and from nowhere a beam of burning fire explodes from his eyes, striking Clark in the chest and face, throwing him up and away in an arc that sends him crashing into the side of a building, tumbling through the upper window he half-smashes into. The Kryptonian for his part rolls over, getting onto his knees as he panics, not truly understanding the heat rays coming from his eyes as they melt the road, sear into a building and then are redirected up at the sky.

A moment later Kara has pounced onto his back, bending him down and shoving his face into the road as it melts and boils from the heat that still comes from his eyes. The Kryptonian shrieks from the heat, his breathing mask cracking and melting still attached to his face, he shuts his eyes tight but it does not help as Kara holds him down. Until the second Kryptonian returns, slamming into the ground just a few feet away from Kara with such force that what is left of the road around them completely shatters, glass seeming to explode from everywhere at once as all of Smallville shakes and creaks and cracks from the force of the landing. And Kara and the Kryptonian are tossed into the air with the rest of the town.

As Kara rolls and picks herself up once more Clark drops out of the building he was tossed into to see the destruction of the town now unquestionable, one Kryptonian standing and the other picking himself up, heat vision now under control and gone as he turns to face them, much of his exposed fleshed covered in blackened burns and boils as he rips what is left of his mask apart, tossing it to the ground, stumbling to hold himself steady on shaking legs.

Clark looks from the one broken and bleeding, to the other who isn't in much better shape, and then to Kara who has obviously taken a pummelling. All of them are a stark contrast to himself, who appears little more than a dusty ruffled, still breathing easy as opposed to Kara and the one without the breathing mask, both of whom are now struggling for breath.

Kara moves first, racing to get at the burned Kryptonian, Clark darting in when he sees the other move to intercept, slamming into him and the two falling into a grapple as they smash into a building, the Kryptonian head-butting Clark and throwing him another way, through a side wall into another shop and the moment Clark has hit the floor he pushes back, sending both of them back into the street.

There, Kara is dodging the burned Kryptonian's efforts with relative ease, managing to fake a fall-back, sweeping back in with a kick to the man's groin, shattering what was left of his armour, and sending him stumbling backwards before he drops to his knees, exhausted, then looking up at Kara, furious, to see only the girl's fist as it _whizzes_ down at him from above, _slamming_ into his face and sending him into the road with the force of an explosion.

And Kara turns her head in time to see Clark whip his arms out, breaking free of the Kryptonian's grip with a surprising ease, and throws a single punch at the man's face, connecting, sending him flying backward in her direction as the breathing mask shatters in the air all around them. The man rises to one knee, blood dripping from his mouth and a broken nose, he stares almost resentfully at Clark. He then looks to is comrade, hearing him whimper in a beaten lump on all that remains of the road, and to Kara, bloodied, beaten, exhausted, but still standing.

Clark comes a little closer before speaking. "Leave." Kara stands there, but says nothing as the Kryptonian also turns his attention to Clark, only by his state of dishevelment would you tell that he had been in a fight. "Go back to Zod and leave this place. Tell him that this planet and it's people are under my protection."

Blood dripping from his mouth, the Kryptonian stares at Clark, stunned, "Why Kal-El?"

"I don't take kindly to people who would murder on a whim." There is another groan from the Kryptonian Kara beat into submission, and other looks at him again, thinking. "Go, now."

He looks at Clark one more time, and clearly not happy about the situation, he moves over to help the other Kryptonian, walking with a slight limp, and once he has him over his shoulder there is a blur of motion, and they are gone.

There is another blur of motion, and Clark reaches out, grabbing Kara by the arm to hold her back. She tries again but Clark won't let go of her, almost petulantly, she looks up at him, "You realise that they'll only come back. And when they do we'll have to finish it anyway."

"I know." Clark says softly, "But look around you Kara, tell me, what do you see?"

She does, and though no one is paying them any attention, it would be simplest to say that the town had become the new definition for complete devastation. And the screams were ever present in her ears. She looks back up at him, firm in her answer, "Something you should not allow to happen again." Taken aback a little Clark drops his grip, looking around as well. Kara turns, making as if to still give chase, but then doesn't. Frustrated she almost explodes with emotion, "How could you Kal-El! Next time it will be worse!" Clark looks to her, and sees her on the verge of tears, shaking as she looks around her. "It only ever gets worse."

Clark steps closer, and hugs her, the tears breaking free. "I did what I thought was right Kara." Confused, Kara cannot stop picturing Krypton and her family as she looks around at the remains of the town. "Violence only sows violence. This conflict started light-years away on another planet, in another galaxy. This destruction followed us across the stars, because no one ever chose to simply stop."

Into his chest, Kara barely whispers, "It's not that easy, Kal-El."

"I never said it was." he replies simply enough, a comforting hand on her head. "But things worth fighting for generally aren't."

Kara pulls back a little, staring up at the face of the cousin she knew as a baby. "But they'll come back. They'll always come back unless you make it so they don't."

"But why does that mean killing?"

"Because some differences in opinion are incompatible."

"True, but why does that force, well, all this?"

Kara thinks for a moment, but finds nothing to say, looking around while not trying to see any the destruction surrounding them. Then, looking back up at Clark and with a smile, she wipes the tears from her cheeks, "You know, I was meant to take care of you right?" Clark nods, but Kara doesn't wait for a response, "And here I am, crying in front of my baby cousin."

Right then, Clark looks up to find his truck nearing them. Martha is driving with Chloe next to her. "Come on." Chloe says. "Time to go."

"Go where?" Clark says, confused.

"Anywhere away from here."

"But.." Clark begins, looking around.

But he in turn is pulled back by Kara, "I know this could be a small thing Kal, but generally we try to _not_ be where those hunting us think we are." Clark looks around one last time, then nods, and he and Kara climb into the back of the truck, the four of them leaving the devastated town of Smallville behind.


	13. The Footprints of Giants

The first thing that struck Colonel Wilson as he laid eyes upon what would once have been described as an idyllic and possibly peaceful town, was the intensity of it. And it didn't matter what he looked at, that intensity never seemed to leave him.

Rubble was everywhere, indeed, it seemed that much of the town didn't even exist any more, all there was was the destruction. He had been to places like this before, they weren't at all uncommon to him. But they were battle zones, hundreds of thousands of miles away from where he stood right then, the very center of the United States. Today there had been a war, right in his backyard.

Amongst the destruction and the debris were the survivors, shaken and panicked, bloodied and broken. None of them understanding what had happened to them as they got what treatment they could in now two makeshift hospitals. And spread around, providing what relief there was to be had, was the national guard, pulling people free and digging through rubble for others.

But in front of him, directly at his feet, the Colonel stood staring at the road. Or rather, the small section that was not pounded into cracks and dust. Kneeling, he hovered his hand over it, still feeling the heat from what appeared to be melted tar. Suddenly, he was again struck by how tiny and fragile his world had suddenly become around him.

The man in the suit walks up to him, coffee in hand. "Rather more than you expected, yes?"

The Colonel rises, looking all around, confused and angry. "What should I have expected? We're dealing with something we'd never even contemplated before."

"You'd be surprised." was the reply, offering him the coffee. The Colonel refuses, and so the suited man shrugs, taking a drink himself before continuing. "Apparently there were four of them." The Colonel looks at him, "Hard to know at the footage, wasn't it?"

"Four?" The Colonel says softly, "Four people did _all_ this?"

"Everyone is saying different things, but yes, going over the reports my best estimate is that there were four. A tall man just over six foot, a short blonde woman, and two more wearing some sort of armour." The Colonel looks back to him, the question hanging until the other man lifts his other hand, tossing the Colonel what remained to the burned Kryptonian's breathing mask. "My first guess would be some sort of breathing apparatus, but off the top of my head I couldn't tell you what metal that is."

The Colonel turns it over in his hands, inspected and making the connection, "I've seen it before. The three who came out of the ship were wearing them." Then he looks at the other man, drinking the coffee almost nonchalantly. "But you already knew that."

"Only an idea." was his reply after he swallowed.

"You have a lot of them?"

"A few."

Looking at him a long moment, the Colonel thinks before asking. "So what, there are a bunch of aliens hiding here on Earth, and now they've been followed to be, collected?"

"That would be the obvious answer, Colonel." Was his almost contemplative reply, "We as humans like the simple answer. But look around you, would you say that there is anything simple about this?" He lets that hang for a moment before continuing, the Colonel studying him more with each word. "I am tasked with stopping this Colonel, however I can. But I am just a man, and we are tracking the footsteps of giants. You strike me as an intelligent and capable man, Colonel. I have a feeling we are going to need you before this is over."

"We?"

He gestures to the people, the survivors, everyone not them. "The world." And the two of them stood there, staring at the pathetic remains of the town of Smallville. Colonel Wilson found nothing to say. But there was a thought, just one, blaring in his mind, _'We must look so small.'_

* * *

Zod stands a few steps back from Faora in his ship's medical bay, another Kryptonian, this one not wearing armour, more the loose clothing of a citizen, tending her. There is only concern on Zod's face as he looks at her, and as the man tending her steps to the side, it becomes obvious why.

Faora, free of her military armour lays twitching in pain, hands and feet bound to the table, struggling to breath despite the mask, this one far more like an iron lung than an oxygen tank, and every vein in her rigidly twisting body is pulsing a dark green. Even the veins in her eyes have become coloured.

The citizen picks up a large needle, fills in with some goo, walks over to Faora and goes to slam it into her but she won't hold still. Zod watches him try to go for it three times before he hurries over, still only concerned, and he pins Faora down. "Faora, Faora. Look at me!" She stops moving and the two meet each other's eyes, so soft as they stare at each other, her struggling to breathe.

"It hurts!" She stifles.

"I know." he says simply, almost as pained as she is just by watching her. He looks to the citizen, nods and turns a little so the man can do his task as Zod holds her down.

The civilian jams the needle directly into Faora's heart, pumping all of the goo into her. Faora, for her part, screams, jerks, and the restraints threaten to come free as the citizen jumps back a little, but before she breaks free Zod wraps his arm around her, now more holding her back than pinning her. She calms a little, dropping back against the table, Zod placing her head down gently, Faora weeping softly as she looks at him.

Zod motions to the citizen, together, the two of them stepping to the door, to whisper just out of earshot. "What is it?" Zod says stiffly.

"The best I can tell," was the nervous reply, "it's the same toxin that we detected in the atmosphere, only far more potent. And raw."

"What do you need?" Zod says, looking at Faora laying there.

"I'm sorry?"

"To fix it. What do you need to help her?"

"Nothing." Zod looks at him, confused, "The data stores have some ideas, but we have nothing at all on board that can help, and she doesn't have the time we need to acquire it."

Stunned, Zod's reply is one of entire melancholy. "You're saying she is going to die."

"There's, nothing. Nothing that I _can_ do." He almost stutters.

Zod, angry, slams an arm into the citizen's chest, pinning him to the wall. "If there _is_ something, you _will_ find it."

The man however, gets angry himself, pushing Zod's arm away to free himself, "You think I don't care? You think this won't be as hard on the rest of us as you? You were gone! She brought us together, held us together! She kept us alive until you came back to bring us hope. You think this only effects you?"

Zod looks away, shamed. Slowly he says, "You're right." He places his arm on the man's shoulder, then neck, looking him in the eye he says, "I'm sorry. I know this isn't your area of expertise, and we are all grateful for what you have done for us." He looks to Faora. "I'm grateful." Then he turns back to him,"Please, just try, while you can."

"She..." he stutters, "She won't last long."

"What about, well, you did it for me."

He shakes his head,"It would be years before she was back, and only a handful years of life after that. And that not considering what would happen if we cloned her from a sample without cleansing her of those toxins."

Looking at Faora, neither of them can still believe it. "Time then." Zod says, tying to cope. "How long?"

"She's strong." was the reply, "She should have died before she got to the table."

Staring at her Zod manages a brief, fond smile, "She's the strongest person I've ever met."

* * *

As dusk creeps in, Clark turns away from Kara, sleeping in the back of the truck, looking up to see Chloe come walking out of the petrol station, eating some food, Martha still inside at the counter. Her arm still red, but neither purple nor a balloon as she uses it, Clark is slightly confused. "I thought that arm was broken."

"Nah." Chloe replies dismissively, "I'm tougher than I look." Leaning against the side of the truck she sees Kara beaten and bloodied. "What about her?"

Clark thinks for a moment, looking first at her then at Chloe. With a smile he says, "She's as tough as you."

Smiling back Chloe offers him some of the food, "Well, there you go." more as though she'd just had a very old question answered than in response to current conversation.

"There you go, what?" he replies, taking some of the food.

"Nothing." she says, "Just another one of life's irrelevant mysteries, solved."

"Like you using meteor rock dust on that woman?" Full of seriousness.

Looking up, considering him she says, "You disapprove?"

"Chloe. You know what it could do to her."

"As opposed to what she was doing to me?"

"You came through okay."

"True. Survival of the fittest in action." She says, going for more food.

"That's, dark."

"Oh, you've met me?"

"What's wrong with you?"

"Oh I don't know." she says, finding it hard to remain calm, "Maybe it has to do with a bunch of aliens showing up and deciding to kill me because they saw me as unfit. Or somehow of less worth than them." Then she looks at Clark, with a fire he hadn't seen in years, "And you, little brother, just stood back and watched. You don't want me to make a blindingly obvious choice how about you make one a little earlier."

"How was that, blindingly obvious?"

"Their ship had connected with the pod, and so I saw them coming, not knowing what to expect I grabbed something that I thought I might need, rather than being totally helpless."

"You wouldn't-"

"Yes, I was. Contrast to them, against someone like you, how could I not be?" she insists forcefully. She takes a deep breath before she continues, "Clark, you saw what happened to Smallville, it's all over the news, do you really think no one was hurt?"

Suddenly, that hits home to him, and Clark asks, "Did anyone die?" And as quick as that, Chloe doesn't answer him, shocked that she herself brought the conversation to this. When she looks away he urges, "Chloe, how many?"

"Clark..." Shuffling her feet.

"Chloe?"

She sighs, "Twelve as of now, dozens are in various states of injury, and about fifteen are missing." She looks at Clark, and isn't surprised at his stunned reaction. Sadly she continues, "Clark, this is the problem. You insist to me that you can save everyone, that you can protect anyone. I love you for it, it's one of the things that makes you a wonderful person. But you couldn't even protect _me_ today, and I was right in front of you. How well did you think getting into a brawl with them inside Smallville would go?"

"Honest..." Clark says, almost pale white. "I didn't. It just, kind of, happened." For a long moment neither of them say a thing, until Clark sees Martha emerge from within the building, coming back to the truck. "Chloe, I wasn't even trying to hurt them." Chloe looks at him, wonderingly as he almost whispers, "I just wanted to stop it. I wasn't, even trying..." he trails off as Martha comes within earshot.

His mother walks around to the other side of the truck to get in. Chloe looks back up at Clark to say, "Then Clark, I pray that we never have to find out what happens when you _do_ try." Clark looks down at her, as worried as she is. "Now, I think it's your turn to drive."

Confused he looks from her to Martha and back, "Where to?"

"Metropolis."

Aghast Clark has to restrain himself from exclaiming. "You just saw me destroy a town, and you want to take me to a city?"

Chloe shrugs. "Not many options. I have things there we need."

* * *

Zod's warship is flying not too far from the ground in the middle of nowhere, when the two Kryptonians who had run from Clark amongst the wreckage of Smallville run across the ground and jump through the air toward it. The burned man is still being carried by the other as he drops in through the hole in the hull created by Kara when she threw another of their crew into the ship at the farm.

The Kryptonian who can stand on his own walks to a doorway, punches a lever and a airtight door cracks open in front of him. He hefts his fellow Kryptonian on his shoulder and carries him through into the ship, punching another lever on the other side to reseal the hull. He starts walking through the ship, which appears completely derelict of life.

Until another pair of Kryptonians, a man and a woman, dressed completely different from each other and not in any discernible military garb, come running up. They stop when they see him, the man turning to the woman and says, "Go tell the General." She races off, and the other man comes over to help with the weight of the burned and crippled Kryptonian, helping them both back through the ship.

They find their way to the medical bay, where they see one Kryptonian – the one who was thrown into the ship – just lifting up and Zod is there testing him for physical deficiencies. The three newcomers join Zod in this room. Zod looks at them as they help the burned man onto another table, the other collapsing into a sitting position almost on top of him. Zod immediately, more instinctually steps over to them. He takes one look at the burned man, winces and looks at the man who helped them get here, nodding toward a side door.

The conscious newcomer watches this, following the other as he races into that room, getting a look at Faora on a table, still alive, though too thoroughly drained of strength to be doing too much despite the pain she remains in. But Zod drags his attention to him, touching his head and giving him a similar treatment to the other man.

"What happened?"

"Kal-El, and Kara Zor-El, General." The woman from before comes over to help, but she takes one look at the burned man and turns instead to take over from Zod, tending the other. "They, well, it just, happened. I mean, you saw what that girl did to Faora."

"Yes." Zod says gravely.

Sensing the darkness in his tone the man looks again at Faora, taking it in as the citizen who had been tending her comes out into their room, looking toward the burned man. "Is she...?"

"She will not last long."

Stunned, the man says the only thing he can. "How can this have happened?"

"It seems Kal-El is not the hope I so desperately had searched for." Zod proclaimed, as gravely as he had spoken of Faora. "He has spent too much time around these, earthlings, and it has made him weak."

"He's, so strong." was the reply, as the citizen steps over to the burned man, looking him over beside them. "Here, on this world, we are strong, despite the poison in the air. But he..."

"It would seem he has grown beyond that small weakness," then he glances for a moment at Faora, "To an extent, at least. He has spent the greater part of his life on this world, beneath it's yellow sun. But as I said, he knows no different. He does not understand what it is he has not had, what is on the verge of being lost forever."

The citizen takes a moment from treating the burned man, meeting Zod's eye and saying, "She would like to talk to you." Zod looks over his shoulder at Faora, lying with her head on it's side, already looking at him. Without a word he turns and walks to her.

As Zod kneels beside her, the first thing he does is put a gentle hand on her head, pushing back sweaty hair from her face. Weak, and barely moving at all, "The pain is almost gone." she struggles through the mask.

Zod nods without knowing what to do, what to say, "Good." he mutters, then repeats himself, still not sure what he's saying, "Good."

"You cannot trust Kal-El to save us." she heaves, deep breaths struggling to say it all, "He's not one of us. He is not deserving of the respect you showed him."

"I know." He looks at her for a long moment, then takes her near hand in his, she is so weak she doesn't even try to grip it. "But how can I make such a distinction, Faora? There are so few of us left." He looks back to her face as he says, "We are all we have..." trailing off as he meets her glazed over eyes, seeing nothing. The machine beside her continuing to force her chest to rise and fall, though to no more purpose.

The Kryptonians in the other room had to look away as Zod lay his head down beside Faora's on the table, just holding her hand as his shoulders trembled.


	14. What was Lost

Chloe walks down a street in suburban Metropolis, the skyline lighting up the night sky beyond her. She carries a few bags worth of food and other odds and ends as she turns a corner into a side-street. A few meters later she turns, going to a back gate into a small backyard of a town-house.

Inside, Martha cannot stop watching the news, Kara, already having cleaned herself, sits with her feet beneath her in another chair, watching with a very different kind of curiosity as many people start talking about what had happened, the dangers that these 'people' could pose to the common man, mostly just trying to stir up trouble.

Clark is drying is hair with a towel, already dressed in a set of clean clothes as Chloe steps inside, shutting the door behind her. As she puts the food down on the table Clark looks at her, curious, thinking that she looks as though she'd done this a million times before.

"I wasn't aware that you had a place in Metropolis."

"There are a lot of things you aren't aware of, Clark." She says with a smile. "As for this one, I have a few places here and there."

"Not bad for a mechanic's daughter."

"What do we do now?" Martha says as she and Kara join them at the table, each of them grabbing some of the food in their own time.

"We'll just have to see about that." Chloe says in reply, pausing to eat a bit. "If they truly do see us as less than them, then I think it's fair to say that they're willing to do anything to get what they want. The question then becomes, what is it they want?" Her eyes turning to Kara.

Kara for her part, doesn't notice this at first, scrunching up her face at the first taste of the food. When she does see Chloe looking at her however, her face turns much more grim. "They're soldiers, so, their goal will be to ensure the survival of our race."

"That doesn't sound that bad." Martha says, chewing, "I think it's actually something we'd all want."

"It's not as simple as that though," Chloe says,"Is it?"

Kara shakes her head sadly, "These are people who started a civil war because they thought their way was right." She takes half a bite, not really chewing or even tasting her food. "In the position they're in, our people on the verge of extinction, there is no telling what shape that survival will take."

"But it's not as though that's a real possibility anymore is it?" Clark asked, but no one answered him. "Zod said they were after a technician, that he'd hoped my father survived so he could help rebuild."

"He talking about the creation of the next generation of Kryptonians." Kara clarified.

"Right." Clark continued, "He himself said that he was lost at Kandor."

"Died." Kara said, "He died on the field of Kandor." the others turn to her once more, but no one says anything, until, "Many did."

"Okay..." Chloe says, "So they cloned him back to life."

"Yes." Clark pushes on, "That's what I figured, but he said that the technology wasn't meant to work that way."

"Many things were lost in the destruction of our planet, Kal." Kara again interjected, "This group survived in a warship, and as it was very little of our technology allowed off-world, much of our way of life was destroyed with everything else."

"So they're after the technology to bring back their people." Chloe says, almost sadly. "I'd almost empathise with them if I didn't already think other things."

In the silence that followed that Martha asks the obvious, "Is there any way they can get that technology?"

"Yes." Kara says, Chloe and Clark looking to her with a start, under their looks Kara, a little uncomfortable says hurriedly, "Jor sent with you all the knowledge of our people."

"Where, how?"

"In a compartment in the pod he sent you here in. A stack of disks as the one he instilled his own consciousness in." At his dumbfounded look she assumes the next, "You never found it, did you?"

"Don't worry." Chloe interjects, "They're in the next room." Now they all stare at her. "What?" She says, almost spilling food out everywhere, turning to Clark she continues, "You wanted me to just say, 'Hey, Clark, I opened this compartment and found a bunch of disks unlike anything we've ever seen, but a couple of years later when I found out what they were and how to access them I had absolutely no clue how to read them?'"

"How long ago?"

Now Chloe drops her head, looking away from Clark. "It was a few months back, I figured you had other things to worry about." Clark thinks on that a moment, opening his mouth, but then the anger drains from his face and he to droops to look at his food.

"Zod will assume you have them, Kal." Kara says to break the silence. "He will come looking."

Then they all sit and eat in silence for a few long moments, Clark unable to not look at Kara. Eventually he can't hold it back any more, "Kara, um," glancing at Martha before continuing, "What was my mother like?"

"Lovely." Kara says wistfully, "Strong, kind. Sometimes, the mother I wish I had." That shocks everyone for a minute, "But ultimately sad. Everyone was sad in those days."

"And my father?"

"Clever, smart, and far stronger than he seemed. I see so much of him in you Kal." She turns her head to face him, "But there's more of Lara in you I think. A strong man, but Jor would not have been strong enough to not kill his enemies. Too focused, too intelligent, he wouldn't even give his opponents a chance of equal footing if he could."

"Do you mind," he says slowly, "if I ask, what happened?"

Tears in her eyes, Kara looks at her food. "It's not, easy. It's been twenty years for you Kal, but..." she starts sniffling, takes a deep breath and almost blurts it out, "They saved us, Kal. They saved us both. They tried to make their escape from the planet, and, others tried to stop them." Face turned down directly at her food, none of them see her face, only her tears as they fall free. "They died. And we lived Kal. That's what happened. They died so we did not have to."

They all stare at her, Clark leaning back, stunned, looks to Martha who places a hand on his shoulder for a moment. Chloe though hasn't taken her eyes off Kara, trembling and shaking and crying. She reaches out and places a hand on the girl's wrist beside her. "It's not easy, watching someone you love die in front of you, knowing there is nothing you can do." Kara turns her head slightly, confused. Clark and Martha share a look and Martha goes to speak, but Chloe instead continues, "My mother is in an institution. She as a degenerative condition with her brain. Its been a, difficult, ten years. Watching the madness settle in and take hold of her, slowly the days where she recognised me became few and far between, and a few years back I found myself, every time I went to see her just hoping that she thought I was a new member of the staff. Now, any day the world could be a different place, and the best days are when I'm no one to her."

Clark and Martha both stare with open mouths, but rather than Kara being insulted she turns back to her food, playing with it as she says, "My father's last acts, I didn't recognise him anymore. And I... I don't think he cared to remember who I was."

Suddenly Chloe cracks a smile, laughing mirthlessly, "Considering Clark's not-dead father I think it's safe to say we're all a little fucked up."

"Chloe," Martha says gently, "you know you can talk to us about anything."

"I know." she replies quietly, "But until, well, how could you have understood, I mean really? And even then, how could I bring it up? You had your own problems."

"You know that doesn't matter."

"I know." she says somewhat petulantly, then smiling at Martha she mutters, "Mum."

Silence grips them for a long time, all of them suddenly far more comfortable than they had been before. Until Kara's eyes catch the TV. Now fixed to a news feed, the reporter is standing on the street in the center of Metropolis, barely holding in a panicked voice when he turns and points to the night sky, where Zod's warship is floating above the city, sitting in such a way as though it were announcing itself. "Um, we could have a problem."

All of the others turn to see the warship sitting in the Metropolis skyline. Chloe walks over, grabbing the remote and turning the volume up. It doesn't take long before the screen becomes thoroughly pixelated, threatening to loose connection entirely. A few moments later, a misshapen clunky image forms, speaking in the voice of Zod.

"Earthlings, I am the man in control of the vessel above your city. I want you to understand that as of this moment, I do not wish to harm any of you, you are nothing more than an inconvenience in the matter I bring to you. For you see, you are not alone. You have not been alone on your tiny little world for much longer than you realise. Two of my people have been using you to hide from me, to keep from me the secrets that would save my people. And to those last remaining descendants of the house of El, I will be waiting here for half of this planet's rotation. If you do not bring me what I want, well... this world will face he same fate as Krypton. And it will begin here."

After the TV goes blank they all just stare at it for what seemed a very long time. Until, Chloe looks at them all, and then steps away toward a side door, another room of the town-house.

"Chloe?" Clark asks.

"Come on." Not saying anything else as she motions them to follow, already at the doorway. Each of them in turn rises and follows.

In the room is what appears to be a half-constructed computer lab. A couple of screens and more computer towers, with wires everywhere. On the desk amongst it all is the stack of Kryptonian data disks Chloe said she had, they are sitting next to what appears to be a recreation of the Kryptonian pod's control panel, wired into the computer system.

Chloe has already sat down in front of it when the others arrive, the computers booting up as she waits, one of the Kryptonian data disks in hand. Kara looks at it all, somewhat stunned, "You did all this?"

"Mostly." Chloe says, sliding the data disk home.

A small light shines through the crystalline disk, and activity begins on the screen, not too different from a USB plug-and-play function. Still shocked, Kara can't not ask the question, "You can access the information?"

"Yep." Chloe says simply, "reading it however, is an entirely different matter." Looking over her shoulder at Kara she continues, "I'm a tech girl, not generally fond of linguistics. You however..."

Kara nods, takes half a step forward before asking, "How do I, uh, access it?"

"Just touch the screen."

Stepping up next to Chloe she reaches out and runs her hand across the screen, seeing it follows her movements she adjusts quickly, scrolling this way and that. Eventually something catches her eye and she looks at Chloe, realising what she was after. Pointing at it she says, "This one."

Chloe reaches out and taps it, the screen goes blank for a moment, and then a new scroll of words are typed, '_Where am I?_'

"Can he hear us?" Kara asks, confused.

"He should be able to."

Followed quickly by, '_I can._'

"Then why?" Kara looks at Chloe, wondrously.

Chloe points to the microphone, "He can hear us through this," and then to a web-cam, "And see us through that." Then sitting back she addresses the computer, "And we should be able to hear you, if you like."

"Yes, I can see that now." comes the voice of Jor-El. And then his face appears on the monitor. "This is one of the stranger things I have ever seen."

"This earth-girl reverse engineered some of our technology, Uncle." Kara says, indicating Chloe.

"Interesting." Is the reply. "If that is the case then you are more intelligent than most of your species."

"Thank you?"

"It was not a compliment, merely a fact."

Chloe looks over her shoulder at Clark and Martha, "I still don't know."

Clark leans forward, "Kara said that you did this to yourself so you could continue to help us."

"I did." Jor-El says through the speaker, "I also believe that you need to find your own path, under your own power, in your own time. And I have seen that you have grown into a strong, independent young man, you have less need of me than I ever thought, my son."

"And Zod? Did you see him coming here?"

The picture of Jor-El on the screen focuses much more than it had, almost a perfect image of his face as he speaks to them. "Zod was here?"

"Yes, he was. He wanted Kara and I to go with him."

"I don't doubt it." Jor remarks, warning, "You're in more trouble than you can imagine, my son."

"He said he wants to recreate Krypton."

"Of course. It's in his programming."

"Programming?" Chloe asks

"The closest word you have for it."

"I still don't get it." Clark asks no one in particular.

"Eugenics." Chloe informs him. "He's talking about the building of a personality from the ground up. The creation of a child with an inherent purpose to their life."

"Doesn't sound so bad." Clark said, almost wishing he had such clarity of purpose in life.

"No, it doesn't." Chloe says, far less certain than Clark, "But, if he were to recreate Krypton, he would do so in his own image. He would take the DNA sequencing and rewire it to get rid of that which he perceives as flaws."

"The girl is correct, Kal-El." Jor says, taking control of the conversation, "Krypton would be reborn as a military state, something which goes against the very nature of the Krypton he was created in, the society he was created to protect."

Suddenly, sounding grave Kara makes an assumption. "You betrayed him, didn't you?"

"In a sense, yes."

Confused, Clark asks, "He told us how he was your strongest supporter. Together you could have saved everyone."

"Yes, and no my son." Jor speaks somehow more melancholic than Kara, "Our civilisation was doomed from an inherent weakness, a flaw than blinded our people. I sought out Zod because he had power, a voice in circles I needed convincing. General Zod believed in me, and he betrayed that belief. Facing the extermination of our people he deigned in necessary to make war, on our own people. The very people I sought to save, he sought to kill so he may save what few remained. Trusting in the man Zod was, rather than considering what he would become, was my great folly, Kal-El, and I paid for it with the extinction of our race. As the blood rained over the fields of Kandor, I saw an opportunity and I took it."

"You betrayed him." Clark repeats.

"I knew long before that Zod could not be allowed to take power as he sought to do. In the name of saving our people he would see to it that all flaws would be eradicated, that all enemies would be destroyed, and to a mind such as his, that will mean any civilisation with the necessary advancement to pose even a minor threat to him. All other life that he found would be prevented from ever reaching such a point. It would be the Krypton that was defeated millennia ago, come back to ravage the galaxies once more. And if this girl truly is capable of recreating and adapting our technology, suffice to say that the Earth will be subjugated under his rule."

Confused, Clarks says, "But he said all he wanted was to recreate Krypton."

"Yes." Jor-El answers, "_His_ Krypton."

"Clark." Chloe says gently, "He's a soldier. He's _built_ to be a soldier. His primary concern is the survival of his his people. He is designed to ensure that they live on, for as long as he is capable of."

Slowly grasping it, Clark mutters stubbornly, "I won't kill him."

To which Jor smiles fondly, "Perhaps, you won't have to."


	15. To Hope

"You've been a little quiet through all this." Clark says to Martha, leaning against the door frame.

She speaks without turning from cleaning the dishes. "What would I say? It's a little over my head."

"No different for the rest of us." He steps over, picking up a towel to help.

"It's different."

"I don't see how."

She gives Clark a quick, flat stare. "Clark, you're, well, you. And now you have Kara. And look at what Chloe has managed."

"Mum."

"No, it's okay." She casts her incredibly soft, loving eyes to her son. "My part in the story is almost over. It's something we all have to face eventually, and really, as a mother, I couldn't be prouder." With a soft smile, she finishes, "I know Jonathon would be."

Almost brooding, Clark turns from her gaze, "Mom, I just destroyed our home town. The _whole_ town, and now, this time, the city... I just..."

Chloe spots this from the lounge room as she passes through, but pauses only a moment before moving on, back into the room with the makeshift computer lab.

"Clark, it's okay to doubt yourself."

"Not for me it isn't, it never has been, and now, I see why." He meets her eyes. "I live in a world of eggs, only if the shells were tissue paper." He turns to the mug in his hand. "If I don't watch myself, every moment." He exerts practically no pressure on the mug, and suddenly there is a crack, a black crooked line appearing running the length of one side. Then, having Martha's attention he brings the mug down, in the most casual of manners, as though he would set it down on the counter, and as it touches down it breaks apart, pieces falling around his hand and feet. "Twelve people, Mum. Twelve..."

She puts her hand on his, the one that had broken the mug and says, "We trust you."

"How can you?"

"Because you're my son." Seeing he's not very relieved by that she turns to him fully, taking his arms and turning him to look at her. "Clark, you do understand why your father would be proud, don't you?" When no answer comes she gives it to him. "The responsibility you show considering your, physical capabilities has nothing to do with it. It's merely that you want to _do_ something. You see failure, injustice, despair, and you want to make it better. You make an effort to help the lives of those around you _be_ better."

Looking at her, he breaks a smile, "You're my mother, you're supposed to say stuff like that."

"Doesn't stop any of it being true." She smiles back. "If you see that you can help, well, you can't help yourself. You never could. And _that_ is why we trust you. _That_ is why your father and I are proud of you, and thankful for you, every day..."

Smiling down at his mother as she trails off, seeing the look of sorrow appear on her face, Clark gently hugs her. "Thank you mum. I couldn't have had better parents."

* * *

Dawn peaks over the horizon, the dull light shining almost painfully across the wreckage of Smallville. Colonel Wilson is sitting in an open tent, reviewing all the footage they had of the destruction of the town. Amongst all the footage they have and the pictures taken, there were no clear images of anyone's faces.

There is the two armoured Kryptonians, being faced down by the tall man and short blond woman, but everything else seems to be little more than a speed blur amongst a haze of dust and debris.

"You, might want to look at this." Colonel Wilson turns to the corner of the tent, where the man in the suit sits, looking at a laptop screen. He rises and walks over, the two men proceeding to watch the message Zod sent out for Clark.

"Is this for real?" Is the Colonel's first question.

"Seems to be." The man in the suit says, closing the window and opening up another, finding a news source to stream live footage from Metropolis. The city is just a little past dawn, the light showing the ship clearly, and shaky footage capturing the statuesque figure of Zod standing on the top of a skyscraper beneath his warship, no longer wearing his Kryptonian armour, just simple military garb.

"Well, that simplifies things somewhat." The Colonel says matter-of-factly.

"I don't like the way he said any of that."

The Colonel looks at him, still facing away, freezing the footage on as close a shot of Zod as it had; still very far away. "How so? He's not after us."

"It was the way he said it Colonel. I got the distinct impression that he in no way sees us as his equals."

"Well, to be fair, we quite clearly aren't."

"There's a difference to stating a fact and voicing an opinion." Then he swivels in his seat, looking up at the military man. "Which do you think it was?"

"It seemed he only want to save his people, and these two..." glancing at those not wearing armour, "are preventing him. That's a frustration I can understand."

"True, but that is not our concern." The man in the suit rises, and walks over to look at the other pictures, more on the destruction than the people. "Krypton. He said we would suffer the same fate as Krytpon. Assuming it was a place, that was not here. So, I must ask, what fate? What is the fate he intends to deliver us if these two, survivors, do not do as he wishes?" He turns to Wilson, "_That_ Colonel, is our concern."

"Well," he says, thinking, "my first thought is that if four of them did this to a small town, what could hundreds, thousands of them do?"

"Somehow Colonel," he says, almost solemnly, leaning back against a table "I think we're yet to see what even two are truly capable of."

There is a long moment of silence, neither of them looking at each other, just staring at the pictures of destruction around them. Then the Colonel looks at the laptop screen, still frozen on Zod standing atop the skyscraper. "So, what are we going to do?"

The man in the suit smiles at the Colonel, "I admire your determination Colonel, but I don't even have a clue as to what we _could_ do." He turns his head to the destruction once more, "We are the children here, watching carefully at the adults, frightened that they may turn on us when they're finished screaming at each other."

"All children grow up eventually." was the Colonel's reply. Which only brought a smile from the man in the suit.

Just then, a messenger came into the tent, carrying a package. He practically scurries over to the man in the suit, hands him the small box, thin enough to hold in one hand but almost the length of his forearm. With it he gets a note, and the messenger leaves as hurriedly as he came.

The man in the suit reads the note, smiles, then crumples it as he pushes himself off the desk. "Time to go, Colonel." he says, holding the package as he walks for the exit.

"Where?" is his stunned reply.

"Where they're going."

* * *

The morning light shines down on Clark as he steps back from his mother. "I trust you." she mutters with a smile, so soft that only he can hear.

Clark nods, returning the smile. He steps over to Chloe, who struggles to smile through the worry on her face. "You got this." she says, hugging him as well. "I'll see you in a little while."

"See you then sis." he returns, stepping back, looking to Kara at his side he asks, "Ready?"

She only nods, but Chloe jumps in, "Wait!" and she shocks Kara as she throws her arms around her in a hug, more fiercely than she had Clark. But this time she says nothing, just a long moment before Kara returns the gesture, and then the girls separate.

Smiling sadly, Kara turns, leading Clark away from the town house. Staring at the skyline of Metropolis in the distance before them, Clark lifts the hood on his coat over his head.

* * *

Years ago, back on Krypton, a young Kara sits cross-legged on a table in Jor-El's lab.

"All of our people," Jor-El was telling her, "have a purpose bred into them. This can be quite comforting at times. I know I was born to be a technician, and every skill I have has been honed to be aimed directly at that task. However, that can also be a burden of sorts. Tell me Kara, do you want to be a caretaker?"

"What does that matter?" The child Kara responds, confused. "It is what I am."

"You misunderstand some, child. What if someone dreamed of being something other than what society had intended for them? What if a child aspired to something greater?"

"But I am what I am." And then, scrunching up her face a little, "And dreams are dreams, they have nothing to do anything."

"What about _who_ you are?" To that, the young Kara has no response. "The dream itself is of little importance in this, Kara. Ultimately it is not about the choice itself, but the _will_ to see it through."

"I would say that my father's will is quite strong, Uncle."

"Yes, but who would you say he is? What kind of man is he?"

The small girl looks away, thinking for a long moment before she say, "Contemplative, distant, and strong."

"And his choices?"

"He does what he thinks is right." When Jor doesn't respond she looks up to find him smiling at her. "What?"

"Child, we can only do what we _think_ is right. The question however, becomes, is that what we actually think?" Kara turns away from him, deep in thought but suddenly sorrowful. Jor-El brings her face around to look at him once more. "Before we can actually do what we think, we first have to be honest enough with ourselves to understand what it is we are doing."

"I... think I understand, Uncle." the girl says, clearly having trouble with it.

Jor-El however, simply smiles as he drops his hand to her shoulder, "One day, you will. I am certain of it."

* * *

On Earth, Kara stands with a hood raised over her head, hiding her hair and face somewhat as Clark is standing next to her. But she is looking up at Zod's warship, and Zod beneath it, still motionless in his calm observance of the city. They stand a few hundred meters back down the street, behind the crowds milling around the area that had been cordoned off by the Metropolis Police Department.

Clark, uncertain what to think, stands quietly beside her. After a moment he lays a hand on her shoulder. Kara turns to face him, breaking a small smile as she looks him in the eyes. Then she turns back to looking at Zod.

"What is it?" Clark asks.

"Just something your father told me, many years ago."

As silence envelops them again, pedestrians wandering all around them, Clark drops his hand back to his side. "You're not going to tell me."

"It's not that important right now." She says, still smiling. But after a moment, without looking at him she does say, "For the longest time Kal-El, your father was the best man I have ever known. Now, well..." she turns to face him, "I'll see you on the other side." And she raises the scarf around her neck to cover her face. A moment later, they both turn back toward Zod, Clark doing the same.

* * *

In the helicopter, the man in the suit waits patiently, if anxiously, alongside Colonel Wilson. Over the radio they hear it being called through.

_ "Wait a minute, two people have breached the perimeter."_

_ "How did they get through?"_

_ "No idea sir!"_

_ "One of them has disappeared!"_

_ "The door to the next building just opened on it's own!_

_ "Where is the other one?"_

_ "Seeming to try to get closer from the ground without being seen!"_

_ "What do we do?_

_ "What do we do?"_

_ "What the fuck is going on?"_

The man in the suit looks to Colonel Wilson, then speaks into the radio. "Is there any chance you can speed this up?"

The pilot tilts his head slightly, "Not by much sir."

"Do it."

* * *

In the lounge room at the town house, Martha and Chloe sit nervously, watching the news feed. The shot switches from one of a door closing to focusing heavily on the hooded figure in the street, already well beyond anyone to retrieve and pull back.

"As you can see," the reporter was saying, the camera switching to one from on high, presumably a nearby building rooftop. "A hooded figure is quietly approaching the alien. We know absolutely nothing of this, we are learning of it only as you are seeing it. In case you missed it there was a second one only moments ago, but he just disappeared. It's like he was there one moment and then just gone." the camera again cuts to another angle, this one from the other direction, more front on and it is visible than the person is hiding their face with a scarf. "I'm sorry, I wish I knew what was going on here, but I can only presume that these two people are in fact the ones the alien known as Zod had wished to see. Why one of them has remained here on the ground, apparently hiding, we could not begin to speculate..."

Chloe and Martha share a look, almost as though they are ashamed at the shared knowledge of their place in the situation; there is nothing they can do.

"Hold on a moment," the reporter continued, as a new camera angle showed the rooftop Zod stands on, and another hooded figure jumped the empty space between buildings to land some dozen feet on the other side of Zod. "The second has arrived to speak with him after all. And the only feeling I can ascribe to that as I look at the people around me is, relief."

* * *

Clark hits the concrete rooftop, stopping dead just a dozen feet behind Zod. The Kryptonian general takes his time turning to face him, a slight look of amusement on his face when he sees that he has covered his face.

"Looking to hide Kal-El?"

"Looking to protect those I care about."

Confused for a moment, he considers before saying, "If I were so inclined, they could not escape me."

"Not from you." Clark replied simply.

To that Zod glances down to the street, and then back to Clark. "Why do you concern yourself so? They are nothing compared to us Kal-El."

"Perhaps I'm more concerned with you're attitude than their fears and doubts."

"Then you contradict yourself." And now he turns from Clark fully, back toward the street. "You have spent too long among these people. You have no clue as to where you came from and what you are. Just look at them Kal-El. Just look, and consider for a moment what four, just four of us did to that small town, without any intention at all behind it."

Clark steps up beside him, looking down, and he cannot stop seeing the destruction of Smallville. "Is that a threat, Zod?"

"Threat?" He said, musingly, "I don't particularly bother myself with threats. That is, of course, until someone else has severely altered my attitude toward them." He stops, taking a breath from the mask, though he stands almost vigilant in the sun's rays. "Perhaps you are right, Kal-El. Perhaps they are more than I am giving them credit for. I suppose Faora would have otherwise lived."

For a long moment, neither of them says a thing, just looking down into the street, side-by-side. Finally, Clark says to him, "I cannot do it."

"No, I thought not."

And Clark was a little surprised at the calmness of acceptance in Zod's tone. "Why don't you leave? Just go, somewhere, and live out what life is left to you?"

"And what would that make me, Kal-El?" Zod says simply, still looking at the humans down below. "I am a man of determination, conviction, with the single desire that of the saving of my people." Now he looks at Clark, "How can you deny me, us, such a thing?"

"Our people are gone, Zod." Clark responds sympathetically, "Lost forever, no amount of dreaming will make them return."

"No," Zod insists, "We can do it, you and I, together, with the knowledge Jor-El sent here with you. We could save everyone Kal-El!"

"And everyone would be designed like the Krypton of old, though perhaps in an image more suitable to you."

"No, Kal-El. To you."

That takes Clark aback, "What?"

Zod places a surprisingly gentle arm on Clark's shoulder, "Our people would be recreated in your image. Whatever you desire to see in the Kryptonian people is possible. It is not my place to restore us, it never was. Only to facilitate the possibility. No, this is a task only for the House of El."

Now Clark steps away from the ledge, and from Zod, clearly troubled, thinking. "Why?"

"Because I am a soldier, and a dead one at that." Zod replies. "I do not have long left to live, but maybe, as Jor-El once implored me to do, I can do this unselfishly, though every bone in my body insists I do otherwise."

Clark looks away, down at the concrete roof, still stunned as he mulls the thoughts, considering it all. He looks down at his hand, as he had when he punched the Kryptonian soldier through the building back in Smallville. The sun burns brightly almost above him as he ponders, clenching his fist before releasing the tension and letting it fall to the side. "No Zod," he found himself saying, the pain in his voice evident even to him. "I, I can't. Trust me, it's not that I don't want to, but Krypton was destroyed, because of flaws inherent in itself, in it's people."

"We can change that." Zod said, imploring, "We can _make_ it better."

Clark shakes his head as he looks to Zod, "No, we can't. It was that precise thinking which led to our people destroying themselves, Zod. It's still with us to this day, I mean, we meet yesterday, and we find ourselves instantly trying to destroy each other. Our people cast ourselves into extinction, and your asking me to bring us back? What would they be? Who would they become? What would that do to the rest of the universe?"

"Whatever you design them to be." is Zod's honest, almost heartfelt response, pleading.

"You are not begging me to be the patriarch of our people Zod. You're asking me to be the God of a new civilisation." Now it is Clark who is practically pleading with Zod, "Don't you see? That has already happened once. How many lives were ended? How many disasters were forged? How many of them would repeat if I were to repeat that action now?"

Utterly distraught, Zod turns back to the ledge, "You disappoint me Kal-El."

"Zod, please," Clark asked, practically begging,"Leave this place. Go find a quiet, secluded area, and take care of what remains of us. Live the last of your life in peace. I know you have not gotten much of that."

Zod almost seemed to consider it for a moment, almost. Then he shook his head. "I cannot. It just, isn't me Kal-El." Now he looks over his shoulder at Clark, almost like one last nice gesture, before he knew what was going to have to happen, "You remind me quite a lot of your father, so I assure you, this will not be pleasant for either of us."

And then, suddenly, Zod begins to rise in the air. Clark watches on dumbfounded at the steady levitation, just a few feet off the rooftop. "I can fly?" escapes Clark's mouth.

Zod releases a sigh and a frown before he responds with, "You have lived your entire life here, Kal-El, and you know nought of your limitations. I, in contrast have spent just three days on this planet, and it seems I have already surpassed you." He now rotates in the air, half-facing away from the ledge so he may look Clark in the face, but with a slight turn of his head would be looking back to the street. "I was constructed to be the peak of military power and intelligence, the ability to spot flaws to either eradicate or exploit them. The ability to improve myself beyond measure. You Kal-El, are a child among insects with these earthlings, but to me you are simply that, a child. Now, give me the power to save my people!"

"They are _not_ insects!"

"It matters not. Though it is commendable that you defend them so loyally, they will be nothing soon enough."

Realisation dawns on Clark's face as he looks at Zod. "You're nothing more than a brute."

"No! _I _am the Saviour of Krypton!" And with that, Zod charged through the air, slamming into Clark and pinning him to the rooftop in a puff of dust.


	16. To Walk as Titans

"No! _I_ am the Saviour of Krypton!" Kara heard Zod scream, and then he disappeared from her sight, and she heard a thump come from atop the building. Satisfied her opportunity had arrived, she stepped out from her small hiding place, moving into the center of the street.

Looking all around she saw the people of Earth staring almost expectantly at her, trying to look from her to the rooftop and back. But in all directions they were far away, and she hoped it would be enough of a distance.

Still not hearing movement from above she decided it was now or never. She knelt down to the tar road, preparing her muscles, coiling like a spring. She turned her head up, laying eyes upon her target; the warship.

She felt herself push off the ground, but it was so far different from anything she had ever done before. She almost shocked herself at the power with which she launched from the ground, such force that she heard the crunch and felt the crater form behind her, though she dared not look back to see the destruction she'd caused; dust, and debris raining all around the street.

She dared not look back because that was how fast she shot up into the sky, the warship gaining in size far more rapidly than she had anticipated possible. In spite of herself, as she felt the wind blowing across her face, despite the fear that such a new experience caused within her, she felt herself smile. It almost felt like she was flying.

* * *

The screams coming from the television were overwhelming, Martha's hand jumping to grab Chloe's arm at the sudden explosion. The camera on the street wavered all over the place, no longer having anything in focus.

Dust, and debris covered everything like a cloud, glass from shattered windows seemed to be everywhere, and amongst it all, the people who had come to watch it were achingly picking themselves up off the street, having been thrown off their feet from whatever had apparently exploded in the street beside the building the alien had been standing above.

The camera finally managed to focus somewhat on the crater in the street that had been where Kara stood. Then the footage cut to another angle, showing Kara, already little more than a speck in the sky to normal eyesight, her hood blown back revealing her long blond hair, shooting up toward the warship in the distance.

* * *

The man in the suit and Colonel Wilson share a look as they hear the explosion and the screams, no one being able to voice any details as to what had just happened. The Colonel's expression expecting the worst.

"Please tell me you have a plan."

The man in the suit nods in reply, "But I have to get close."

* * *

Clark, still on his back, frees himself from Zod's grip, pushing him up and back. He immediately backs up to the other side of the rooftop, trying to get Zod to follow him.

The Kryptonian general, for his part, practically ignores the movement. He looks over the ledge, seeing the destruction Kara caused when she jumped. Curious, he sees the people down below, among the debris.

"Not here Zod!" Clark calls, "You wanna do this fine! But not here!"

He never turns to Clark as he says, "How will you drag me away, if you so wish to protect these, _creatures_?"

"Zod," Clark says slowly, "You want me."

"No." he replies, "I want something you _have_."

"Zod, I can't." Clark says painfully.

"We'll see." Zod almost mutters, though still more than loud enough for Clark's ears.

* * *

The cameraman on the ground has managed to right himself, getting good footage once again as the reporter gets back to what has happened. "So, it seems that the smaller hooded person has, well, jumped up toward the space ship up above us, while the other continues to talk with the alien on the rooftop above." The camera is holding on the warship, Kara not more than a speck as she disappears against the colours of the warship in the distance. "The alien seems to be looking down at us once again, and, OH MY GOD!"

The reporter screams and the camera pulls right back to show a long beam of fire shooting from Zod on the rooftop down into the street, striking the people behind the barrier across from them.

It goes on for only a moment before the beam of fire sweeps down the street, searing the road and wrecking the building across from him as it turns toward the reporter and cameraman, the people who had remained already screaming and fleeing in panic to get away. The beam of fire hits the camera and the footage goes dead.

Chloe and Martha are still sitting on the lounge, watching. Martha has a hand to her mouth and Chloe's face turns from shock to near rage. She gets up, moving toward the computer lab, leaving Martha to watch on as another camera picks up the feed. This one from a nearby rooftop, higher than Zod.

Clark disappears from sight, and reappears next to Zod, having struck him in the face, sending Zod flying back into the next building.

* * *

_Kara enters the warship through the hole she made in it's hull, hood and scarf blown away from her face on her journey upward._

_She closes the door behind her, quickly darting through the near deserted ship._

Zod rips the breathing mask from his face, rolls his neck, stretches his jaw, and walks over the wrecked floor of the building he had crashed in to. He takes his time getting to the shattered window, staring across the street at Clark, who waits where he had been standing a few moments before.

Clark watches as Zod hovers a little, squatting in the air, almost the center of the broken window. Clark braces himself against the ledge, leaning toward Zod in turn.

The Kryptonian general blasts out of the building with enough force to make the building tremble as the structure around him cracks. Clark in turn leaps off the ledge, the concrete crumbling at his strength. The two meet in mid-air, Clark going with hands out, Zod twisting in mid-air to drive a fist to Clark's face.

The next Clark knew he was thrown down and backward, the world slamming and crashing around him as he tumbled through a handful of floors of the building he had been standing on a moment before.

He finally comes to a stop, picking himself up and dusting himself off a little as he looks behind him, seeing the windows of the other side of the building only a few dozen feet away, and more buildings beyond. He instead takes a dozen steps forward, looking up at through angled wreckage of the lifeless building, to see Zod hovering in the air, waiting.

Zod shoots down at him, and Clark quickly found himself lost in a haze of destruction as they grappled together, throwing each other this way and that, Clark far more focused on pinning Zod than actually hurting him, Zod in turn, struggling to break free of Clark's strength. Tables and walls fall away as they throw each other around, but Clark never notices before Zod has braced himself, pushing forward and driving Clark back, out the window and continuing, slamming him into stone and glass and steel behind him, all of it shattering as he was ploughed through it.

There was a whirlwind of destruction all around him, and then suddenly he was out of the building and his back slammed down, Clark letting out a muffled yell as he came to a stop. And all around him, he heard the screams and footsteps of people running.

He opened his eyes to see Zod kneeling over him, an image quickly covered by Zod's fist as it came down, slamming into his face. Again. And again. And Clark felt his mouth suddenly burst with wetness. He reacted, grabbing Zod's fist as it came down once more, with his left hand he pushed Zod up, and then with a two footed kick he shoves him away, in an instant slamming through a parked car and into the ground floor of the building behind it.

_Kara hurries through the Kryptonian warship, darting down corridors and around corners, finding her way toward the bowels of the vessel._

Hood thrown back, but scarf still wrapped around his face, Clark stops pushing himself up at a knee, looking around at a street full of people staring at him. A _thud_ drags his attention back toward Zod, but all he sees is the parked car spinning through the air at him.

He catches the car by the roof, but then there is a crash and Zod has burst through the car, slamming a fist into him, throwing him back into the building behind, more dust and debris crashing everywhere as he tries to stop himself, only to get hit again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

_ The man who wasn't beaten bloody in Smallville appears around a corner a little ahead of her, turning and panicking somewhat as he sees her race toward him. She pounces, already flying through the air at him as he pulls a knife. Her feet slam him in the chest, throwing him back into the wall, half-crashing through it._

Clark suddenly finds he is back out in the daylight. He focuses on where Zod is, and charges, only to see a flash of light, feel a blast of heat, and suddenly he is thrown backward again, slamming into another building.

_ The Kryptonian in the wall groans in pain and pushes himself free the metal a little groggily, looking around but finding no sign of Kara, or the knife he dropped. He taps an intercom, "Guys, if anyone can hear me, we have an intruder toward the engine area." And with that he moves off, carrying an arm gingerly._

Amid screaming, Clark starts picking himself up, groaning a little, finding a fair amount of his clothes having been burned away across half of his chest and an arm. But then Zod is looming over him, grabbing him around a leg, spinning and throwing him up through the ceiling. Through all the crashing debris Clark can't even tell how many floors he smashes through, finally coming to a deadening stop against another ceiling, opening his eyes to find Zod already upon him, slamming into him and carrying him the rest of the way up, and Clark feels sun against him once again in a few moments as they break out the roof of the building.

He tries to push Zod away, and then punches him in the gut, throwing Zod back several feet, but the general recovers, then darts around in the air, smashing Clark this way and that, until he gets behind him, arm around the throat, the two of them looking down at the city of Metropolis and the destruction they have already caused, the warship a ways off to their right.

_ Kara races down the halls as the alarm starts going off, the doors becoming sealed around her. She eventually comes to a door, punching through where it is split at the middle, and, though struggling, she manage to pry it apart just enough to slide herself through._

"Look at them, Kal-El. From up here they seem somewhat, insignificant, don't they?" His grip tightens o Clark, choking him. "With a wider understanding of the universe, it can make one wonder, how much are they worth?"

_In the engine room she gets to work, darting over to a console and ripping it apart, pulling from a pocket in her jacket what appears to be a Kryptonian engine part, forcing it into place among the circuits and wires she is searching through._

"How much is one man willing to sacrifice?"

_ Suddenly Kara is ripped back a little, but she doesn't loose her footing, looking to see the citizen who had been drafted as a medical officer, trying to pull her away from what she was doing._

"What lengths is one willing to go to, to protect that which he deems most precious?"

_They grapple for a few moments before Kara stumbles, looking down to find a knife embedded in her beneath the ribs, the citizen holding the hilt._

"You know why I am here Kal-El. But why are you?"

_With an frustrated gesture Kara shoves him away, and the man goes flying back into the wall, crashing into it as the previous man had._

"Just look at them Kal-El. They cannot even understand themselves let alone comprehend the complexities of the universe..."

_Kara has gone back to typing at the console, but hearing footsteps she ducks and rolls at the last moment, crawling away from the gunfire blasting all around her_

"...and you know it or you would not hide your face as you do. Why Kal-El?"

_Kara huddles behind the console, seeing it destroyed and the holographic projection flickering and dying. She drops her head back, one hand holding the knife still embedded in her._

Through the choking, Clark coughs, "Life."

Zod slackens his grip a little, "What?"

"They have the same right to it as everyone else."

"Life is fickle, Kal-El." He almost sounds disappointed, "And naive."

_Kara slowly, painfully pulls the knife out of her belly._

"Maybe." Clark says, pulling Zod's arms away from him. "But it doesn't know when to stop. Unhindered, it always finds a way to go on." He twists in Zod's grip, bringing them face to face in mid-air, arms out to either side as they grip each other. "The right to judge that, is beyond any of us. How are we any better than they?"

_Kara holds the bloodied knife in one hand, the gunfire stopped she pokes her eyes around the corner, but drops back, wincing at more fire, when the X-ray vision kicks in. Looking through the console she stops paying attention to the door, and starts breaking the back of the console apart._

"Foolish boy." Zod replies scornfully. "Life is not divinity. It simply is a state of being. It is the air, the water, the fire, and the ground. Once it is tamed it can be put to better use. Case in point." and Zod slams his head into Clark's, blood flying from Clark's nose as Zod breaks his own forehead open, grabbing Clark by the throat less than a moment later.

_Kara has her head in the back of the console, amongst the circuits and wires, X-Ray vision showing her everything she needs to see. She pulls a couple of wires free, swapping them around, finding the right one and plunging it into another slot._

Behind Clark, Zod sees his a flash of light from his warship, as the space around it literally seems to fold in on itself. It lasts only a moment, and then the ship is gone. Simply there one moment, and then gone the next.

And then suddenly Zod and Clark get pulled out of their place in the sky, as though they were ripped toward where the warship was, the two of them coming apart as Zod lets Clark go, and Clark falls. He fumbles his arms around himself, trying to throw them – and himself – in any direction other than down.

He manages to roll himself in the air, but only succeeds in twisting so that the side of his pelvis slams into the balcony of a rooftop, the stone shattering as he tumbles down, causing more wreckage of the building as he tries for a grip, finding one still some hundred feet above the street.

Zod twists and tumbles and comes to a stop in mid-air, staring open-mouthed at where his ship had been. Shock turns to anger and he turns to where Clark just fell over a building toward the street below.

Clark glances down, seeing some people standing and looking up at him, still more in the buildings around. He reaches for his scarf, wrapping it around his face once more, then pushes free of the building, throwing himself across the street to the building opposite, and back once more, working his way down as gently as he can, still managing to wreck the buildings as he slams into them and grabs on. Until he's only twenty feet above the street, then he throws himself out into the middle of it, landing on his hands as knees as softly as he can, trying to absorb all of the shock. He looks up at the people nearest him in the street, two children, a brother and his older sister, aged some twelve and four years.

"Kal-El!" Clark head Zod scream, and he reflexively turned his head up to see the general hovering over a hundred feet above the street. Then the Kryptonian warrior rolls in the air, angling downward, and before Clark realises what he is going to do, he _shoots_ straight down at the street.

Clark yells "RUN!" but it is drowned out as Zod _slams_ into the street with the force of an explosion.

* * *

Colonel Wilson, looking through the windscreen of the helicopter, sees what he can only assume is an explosion in the street only a few blocks away, right below where the alien had been hovering.

"Your plan is to get close to that?" he says to the man in the suit.

"I didn't say it was a good plan."

* * *

The dust clears a little around Clark, on one knee, removing his arms from around the twelve year old girl as she looks up at him, holding her crying little brother, tears in her eyes as they turn toward the street all around them. People everywhere are screaming and yelling, pain and terror everywhere amongst the destruction.

Clark grabs the girl's shoulder, getting her attention once again. "Run home, now!" The girl nods, picks up her little brother and races off, to him, seemingly painfully slowly.

He turns around, and stepping out of the dust-covered crater just a dozen feet away, is Zod. "Everything I have done, has been for the welfare of my people."

"I know."

"Everything you see before you Kal-El, is because of you. You denied me. You spurned me. And you have betrayed your own people. You have caused your own destruction."

"Zod," Clark plead, "There's no reason to fight."

"Perhaps not." Zod said, rage still covering his face, "But it will make me feel a lot better."

And Zod threw himself through the air, now Clark managing to move fast enough to protect himself, to block every attack Zod threw at him, but that didn't stop Zod from throwing him back several feet with every blow, screaming in anger for Clark to fight back. And before Clark realised it, the pain and turmoil of the street around the crater was far off in the distance, and Zod was attacking him relentlessly, driving him back through cars and poles, picking up a fallen streetlight and swinging it around, Clark bringing up an arm, the steel bending back at the blow.

Zod, frustrated, pins Clark back against a stone pillar, the front of a building. "Fight me Kal-El!"

Clark shakes his head, "You said yourself, you did it for them. Well, there is no them anymore. There's only us. We're the only ones left."

That enrages Zod further, slamming a fist into Clark's face, another under the ribs, and Clark ducks and twists as Zod throws another, the stone pillar shattering at the blow, Zod twisting as well to chase, and when he throws another blow Clark catches it, turning Zod to get behind him and despite how Zod struggles Clark holds him in place, forcing him down from behind, one arm pinned behind his back with Clark holding him around the throat.

"Stop Zod!" Clark yells.

"Fight me!"

"No!" Clark insists.

"Fine then!" and he turns his eyes toward a group of onlookers who hadn't yet run.

Clark sees the turn of the head, seeing him looking at the group of people. "Zod, what are you doing?"

His eyes turn bright red, and though there is only the slightest moment before Clark slams his right hand over Zod's eyes, it is enough for a split-second of red fire to rip across the side of one of the people before it slams into the building behind them, causing a minor explosion.

Clark looks at the people, now scattered around on the ground, one man having had his arm half seared off by the beam of fire. In Zod's face, his hand starts to glow and heat,but he doesn't remove his grip, even as he starts screaming in pain. Reverting to instinct, Clark squats and launches himself backwards through the air, him and Zod only a blur in the air as they fly out of down town Metropolis.

* * *

The helicopter rounds a corner for it's three occupants to see Clark and Zod shoots away in the opposite direction, taking the ledge of a building with them as they shoot away.

The pilot moves the vehicle up, trying to go faster.

Colonel Wilson looks around the street, seeing the small destruction nearby, and the chaos further away as they fly by. He looks to the man in the suit, unsure.

* * *

Martha is still sitting on the lounge, watching the news. The reporting has long since turned to a man in a studio, though they continue to show some pictures of the destruction of the city, mostly from above.

"Again everyone, what you are seeing of downtown Metropolis all took less than five minutes. Five minutes has caused a level of destruction no one... and coming through now, we have confirmation, the two men have left. I repeat, they have left the downtown area. What this means for the rest of Metropolis remains to be seen. We can only be grateful that the duel has moved on, hopefully to a less populated area..."

Chloe is in the computer lab, legs up against her chest as she watches the action nervously unfold on three different computer screens, showing it all in over a half a dozen different windows. One of them a continuous loop of the Krytponian warship disappearing.

All of the other footage is live, mostly focused on the destruction now as there is no live footage of the fight anymore. One of the windows shows a crash into a freeway overpass in the distance, and the camera shifts, closing in on the destruction.

* * *

Clark and Zod shatter the concrete overpass as they tumble free from each other. Many of the cars slam to a stop, Zod crushing one car as he lands, the car twisting and turning beneath him, another reacting far too late and going to run him down until he backhands it from below, throwing it up into the air in a spin.

Clark rolls to a stop, seeing the car Zod had flipped and he reacts, launching himself up to catch the car and place it down. As he turns to face Zod he sees the Krypton warrior having jumped at him, so Clark stumbles back a little, and Zod adjusts the blow that was meant for his head, instead diving his fist into Clark's knee. There is a sickening _crunch_, and Clark drops to the ground, screaming in agony.

Zod stands tall, looming over Clark as an unmanned drone flies over them, camera catching what is going on. From the other direction, a helicopter is coming in toward them.

"You have destroyed us, Kal-El."

Clutching his knee, Clark looks up at Zod. "I know."

"Why?"

"I did what I thought was right."

"And Krypton?"

"Zod, don't you think for a moment, that if I could bring them back, I would? But what they were in those last days, one only had to look at Kara to know. I can't Zod. I just, can't."

"You are too much like your father, boy." Zod replies, stepping up over him. "If the power to save my people is within my grasp, how can I not?"

"Zod, please," Clark pleads, "Just stop. All you have to do, is stop."

"You have heard nothing I've said, have you?"

For a long moment, Clark says nothing, lost in their mutual pain. Finally he gingerly pushes himself up, his right leg unable to hold his weight. "Zod?" he says, lifting his head and limping over. Zod stands ready, unsure as Clark grabs him by the shoulders. "I'm sorry."

Zod blinks, stunned. "That's it?"

"What else can I say?" Clark replies simply, "I am so, very sorry. About everything."

Zod places his left hand on Clark's right arm, looking straight into his eyes, taking a deep breath he says, "You're sorry." and he drives his right fist into Clark's gut. Clark drops to his knee, screaming in pain as he tries to hold onto Zod, who then slams his fist into Clark's face, who finds blood dripping from his mouth and nose as he holds himself up on his hands. "You're sorry?" he screams at Clark. Clark looks up to find another fist flying at his face. Staring down he sees more blood on the ground beneath his face, and then a boot slams into his side, sending him tumbling and skidding across the road, and then falling over the side of the overpass where he collapses onto the freeway below.

Zod turns, striding to the other side of the overpass, his eyes fall on the helicopter, just pulling in to hover nearby.

Clark opens his eyes to see a bright flash, and the helicopter crash into the ground nearby, Zod descending slowly to the road ahead of him, turning in the air to face him, voice getting louder as he speaks. "You condemn our people to extinction, Kal-El. And all you can say is that your sorry?"

Pushing himself to has feet, Clark says, "What would you have me do? They are already beyond our reach."

"No, they would grow into something more. They would evolve beyond the expectations of those who were lost."

Clark unexpectedly charges Zod, who in turn counters the blow Clark tries to throw, catching his arm, punching him in under the ribs, sweeping his legs and kicking him away, annihilating a concrete column.

In the helicopter, the pilot is dead, and the man in the suit twitches near death, half his body burned almost unrecognisable. Colonel Wilson picks himself up, moving to look at his companion, who mutters weakly, pushing the package toward him, "Finish it." dying. The Colonel, on his knees, opens the package and finds a knife within. The military man takes a hold of it by the lead scabbard, and crawls out of the helicopter wreckage.

Clark looks up to see Zod standing firm, and behind him is Colonel Wilson, very clearly coming over toward them, eyes intent on Zod's back, though very plainly concerned a little with Clark himself. Clark throws out a hand, screaming, "No! Stay back!" Surprised and annoyed, the Colonel can do nothing before Zod notices him, darting over in a blur of motion to grab the Colonel by the right side of his face, dragging him around like a rag doll.

"Is this what you value, Kal-El?" Zod says contemptuously, "Does this, hurt you?" he says as he tightens his grip on the Colonel's face, so gentle for him, already excruciating for the human. The Colonel tries to punch and kick Zod, but it does nothing at all. "So feeble. So, weak." And the skin on the Colonel's face starts to stretch and rip, Zod's thumb puncturing the man's eye with a childlike effort, Wilson screams in pain, right hand clawing at the wrist that has the grip on his face.

"Zod!" Clark screams, "Stop!"

"Look at them Kal-El." he says gently, no longer paying the Colonel any attention even as he holds him. "Foolishly interfering when they have nothing to offer you, nothing but pain. They cannot even help themselves."

With that, the Colonel does the only thing he can, reflexively drawing the knife with his right hand he immediately buries the blade into Zod beneath the ribs. Zod grunts in surprise, and then with a pained scream as Zod's grip tightens in response, Wilson drives the blade up Zod's chest, the Kryptonian's flesh and bones alike parting at the blade's touch as though they were nothing but warm butter. The weapon pops free of Zod at the shoulder, the Colonel falling free of the Kryptonian's grip as he stares at the blade, glowing a dull green beside his face.

In a blur of motion Zod rams his right fist into the Colonel's chest, cracking his ribs and slamming him into the ground, and then he screams as he grips his side. Clark jumps up, grabbing Zod once more just in an attempt to get him to stop, caught between trying to pin him and help with the wound. But Zod just backhands Clark and with a second blow knocks him away once more.

Zod drops to his knees, clutching the gaping gash up his side, sweating and coughing, he looks like he's about to be sick. Then he looks up to find the Colonel hobbling the last three steps toward him, glowing knife in his hands once more. Zod stays still, looking from the blade to the man, slightly impressed, groaning in agony as he first hunches over, then sits back on his heels to look Colonel Wilson in his one remaining good eye. With an almost relieved smile he speaks to the human warrior, "Do it."

Clark lifts his head to see the Colonel shove the Kryptonian warrior back with a foot, and then jumps on top of him, burying the blade into Zod's chest. And though Clark saw Zod's mouth remained tightly closed, he heard a pained scream as he watched the blade run right through Zod without any resistance at all as it speared his heart before slamming into the road beneath.

He saw the Colonel roll off of Zod, where he remained unmoving. But then he found his eyes on the ground below himself, unable to not hear himself as he wept softly.

What finally brought him back to the moment was the sound of helicopters closing in, and looking up he saw them approaching, both military and civilian. Looking around he saw some civilians standing around apprehensively, others poking their heads over from the overpass above, only a few pulling their phones out to record him.

Reflexively he lifts the scarf back around his bloodied face, and he pushes himself up, looking at Zod and the Colonel, both laying motionless side by side. Clark hobbles over without thought, and drags the Colonel a few meters away from Zod, and then stares at Zod, tears on his cheeks. Every human in attendance watches as a he blasts the corpse of the Kryptonian warrior with a beam of fire so intense that it temporarily blinds them all.

When they blink away the specks from their eyes, the dust clearing, all that remains is the bones of Zod, lying where he had died, knife still in his chest. And Clark is nowhere to be seen.


	17. The Last of the Kryptonians

Clark, with more effort and pain than he had ever thought possible, limps inside the Kent farmhouse to find the TV on, the news playing footage of the destruction of Metropolis. "This destruction," the reporter was saying, "caused only two days ago, was caused all within the span of only twenty minutes. To think that there are beings out there, capable of doing this. Right now, as you can see, everyone is still in mourning over what has happened. Only an hour ago the death toll pushed beyond the hundred mark, and there are still dozens in the hospitals, the continued updates of which we will bring you. Not any actual names, as per the request of the Mayor of Metropolis, just the actual figures themselves. And I can understand that to a great extent, just allowing the victims of this catastrophe to hopefully move on with their lives in the best way they can, without interference from others pestering them about what happened to them. For what really, can they tell us that we don't already know? All that they know is what we already do, caught on hundreds of cameras across the city. It still doesn't seem real, that two men, just two, did all of this in the same amount of time it would normally take one just to order breakfast in the morning."

The TV gets put on mute, Clark snapping out of it to look around, finding Chloe with the remote in hand. Both of them remain silent, Clark not really able to look at her, just staring back at the TV. Chloe drops the remote down on the lounge, trying to drag his attention away, "Dwelling on that won't do you any good."

"Over a hundred people, Chloe." He says softly, still watching the TV. "Over a hundred." he repeats, still not able to truly comprehend it.

"You did the best you could."

"The best? If my best lets a hundred innocent people die... over a hundred."

"And how many more would have died if you weren't there?"

"Maybe none." Finally Clark looks at her, finding her having taken a few steps closer. "They came here because of me. They came looking for me. For my father. For their salvation."

"You made your choice." Chloe says simply, trying to remind him.

"Yes." is his reply, looking at the TV once again. "I just don't know..."

"What?"

Looking her dead in the eyes he finishes it, "If I can live with it."

Smiling sadly, Chloe is once again finding his innocence somewhat charming. "You are an extraordinary man, Clark. It's nice that you want to save everyone, maybe, one day, you will be able to. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to, or even try, but how I understand it, that's really just not possible."

There is a moment of silence before Clark looks at her again, "And the bus crash?"

Chloe is confused for a moment, and then remembers, "When we were fourteen?"

Clark nods. "I saved everyone that day."

Chloe looks up at him hesitantly for a split-second, almost saying something before she decides not to, saying instead, "Clark, that was an accident, this, that..." she nods to the TV, "is the last thing I would aliken to a bus crash."

"And Zod." Clark says softly, "I still, if that man hadn't, I don't think I could've..."

"Of course you wouldn't've." she replies with a smile. "To you, life is a majestic painting of black and white."

"Oh really," Clark says humorously, "And what is it to you?"

She shrugs, "A kind of murky, grey fog." That draws a sharp look from Clark, as though he's reassessing her, "Don't look at me like that, little brother. Life isn't easy, and as you get older decisions only become harder to make."

"Maybe they should be."

"A world where the choices we make are simple?" Chloe ponders, dreamlike, "That would be..." and she trails off, thinking it through and becoming a little confused.

"Would be what?"

"I'm not sure." she says with a smile, "I guess I just proved my own point to myself." Then she sighs, leaning against the back of the lounge, "I dunno. I'm starting to think that choices shouldn't be simple. That the difficulty of the decision is kind of how we know we're doing the right thing."

Shocked a little he says, "Chloe, the right thing shouldn't be a hard thing to do."

"And what about your people? Zod? Was that easy, or hard?" Clark finds nothing to say to that, just looking at the TV once again. "I've gotta go to Star City."

"Queen Industries wants you back?" Chloe nods, "Less than a week. A new record."

"Maybe they've realised how indispensable I am."

"You know, you could just do what they tell you."

To that she smiles fondly, "Oh little brother, where would the fun be in that?" And she stands, heading toward the front door.

Clark follows her out, pulling her up just outside. "Chloe, thank you, for taking care of mum during..."

Still smiling, Chloe rolls her eyes, "Clark, you never have to thank me for something like that. I'd do anything for you and mum. You're my family."

"Still," Clark continues, almost insisting, "Thanks."

Chloe nods, "I'll see you in a few days." and she waves as she turns, walking toward her car.

"Family." Clark mutters, watching her go. After she has left he turns around to the house, but finds himself walking instead toward the barn.

Stepping inside he finds the barn a mess, everything thrown around as though people were searching for something, the trap door torn up and thrown across the room, but the floor isn't destroyed. At his feet he finds the drawing Chloe had made so long ago. He picks it up, dusts it off and takes a look, remembering, the planetoid, the joy, the sad, sorrowful faces, the words on the page long since lost in a black/gray smudge. He thinks for a moment, then drawing in hand he walks to where the trap door was, descending the stairs to find the pod he was sent to Earth as a baby in, still there.

From his pocket he pulls a Kryptonian data disc, a moment later sliding it into the slot in the control panel, he steps back as the pod lights up, a holographic projection of Jor-El appearing in the air before him.

"Kal-El." the image says to him, "You succeeded." It was not a question.

"Yes."

"Zod is dead?"

"He is."

"And his warship?"

"Gone."

"Then a congratulations are in order."

"Hundreds of people died."

"Acceptable losses."

Clark looks up, horrified, "How can you say that?"

"The best scenario is that Zod would have turned the people of this world into slaves for his new empire."

"He said..." Clark stuttered, "He said that he didn't want that, that he'd let me decide what the new Krypton race would look like. He said he would leave it to me."

"That is, unforeseeable," replied a surprised Jor-El, "And still with drastic problems of it's own."

"I know."

"I am glad you went through with it, Kal-El. A militaristic Krypton is not something this world would have survived."

"I didn't do it." He looks up at Jor-El, who only says nothing, waiting for more information, "A man came along. A man in a military outfit. He had a knife made out of this, meteor rock stuff. He killed Zod."

"Perhaps these humans are far more capable than I gave them credit for."

After a long moment of silence Clark says, "What of Kara?"

"Do not dwell on your cousin, my son. Kara is capable of taking care of herself."

"Where did you send her?"

"A prison." Jor replies gently, "A bubble I created, sitting in the space between the dimensions. A place where the dangerous and the untamable are sent. A place where they can never come back."

"So, you sent Kara to die after all."

"The place I sent her to, cannot hold one of our family."

"Then why didn't you send me to do that instead of her?"

"Because you are not ready for such a task as that would present. Kara has the knowledge of near a billion years of Kryptonian history to guide her. You would have none of that, and you would perish. Kara knows this. She is alive, and has the ability to return to you, if she desires."

There is silence for a long time, Clark sitting back on the steps, eyes once again turning to the paper in his hand. "You said the prison was for dissidents?"

"Yes."

"Enemies of the state?"

"In the last years, yes."

"How many?"

"Hundreds."

Upon hearing it Clark seems overcome with relief. "Will she bring any of them back with her?"

"It is her choice to do so." Jor says, watching Clark carefully. After a few moments, Jor brings up something else, a symbol appearing in the hologram before him. "Kal-El, do you see this symbol?" Clark looks, nodding, "This is the symbol of our family line, the House of El. Myself, your mother, your cousin and her parents, many others back tens of thousands of years. In the last days of Krypton however, it took on another meaning. Zod and my brother remarked to me on many occasions how when the people saw this symbol, something would happen to them, they would stand a little taller, appear a little stronger, and believe a little more firmly. The people of Krypton believed more firmly in our line than many of the others, and when they saw the symbol of our house, even if we were not there, they would simply begin to believe. A simple thing, to believe that the future, the world, could be better. And yet, that is what happened. This symbol brought more hope to the people of our world than Zod managed to achieve himself in his entire lifetime."

"Why are you telling me this?" Clark asks, confused.

"Because I can see it on your face. You want to help, in any way you can. It is for that look that I could not be more proud of you, my son. But your place is not to rescue our people, but perhaps, you could help shepherd them along."

"I don't understand."

"I am saying that you have the power to help the people of this world."

"But, they fear me, I would fear me." Clark says simply, unable to keep the horror from his voice a he continues, "Zod and I killed hundreds of people."

"Of course they will fear you. All the creatures of the universe fear things they do not understand. You, have a chance to show them another way, a better way. The people of this world are young, if you choose to do so, you must be patient, understanding, caring. They will not see, they will not understand. But, perhaps, in time, they will come to appreciate, to believe in something greater than themselves. And, when they are ready, you, Kara, any any others who have survived, may step out of the shadows, and join these people in the light. You Kal-El, could be the bridge between our two peoples, and in time, together, we could accomplish wonders."

* * *

In Star City, Oliver Queen walks into his office, finding a person waiting for him, sitting in his chair, boots on his desk. He gives a carefree smile, then turns and walks over to a drinks tray at the side of the room, "You don't look too shabby for a girl who was almost chocked to death."

"What can I say?" Chloe responds, "I'm more resilient than I look."

"That, you most certainly are." Oliver replies, stifling a laugh, making a pair of drinks. "That mineral of yours seemed to come in handy after all." He takes a sip from one, turning and walking over to the desk as he continues. "I have to admit, I had my doubts, but it seems our concerns are becoming more inevitable by the day." he places the second drink down in front of Chloe, taking another sip from his own as he steps over to the window. "If the last week is anything to go by, we're going to need all the help we can get."

"And that's you in a nutshell, isn't it?" Chloe says, not really a question as she takes the drink off the table. "Any chance to help your fellow man."

Not taking any offence by it he replies with, "That knife was your idea. And tell me the truth now; if not for those three men who gave their lives to do what needed to be done, how much worse do you think it would have been?"

"The greater good." Chloe says sadly, staring into her drink. "He's a better man than us."

"He can afford to be." Oliver pauses to take another drink, then turns his head to say, "And what of our mighty saviour? Can he be persuaded?"

Chloe chuckles gently, that soft smile on her face once again as she looks up at Oliver, "He's not exactly a team player."

Oliver returns the smile, looking back toward the city. "Are any of us?"


	18. Author's Note - Final Thoughts

Though there is only a small intent to do one, but if a sequel does come about from this, I want you to know that it will _not_ be a rewrite of Batman v Superman. No, if I were to do it than it would be a direct continuation of this, Clark rising to the mantle and responsibilty of what it is to be Superman in a world that still is not sure what to make of him. So, in short, far more original than what this has been.

So that's it, I hope you enjoyed it, and please let me know if you'd be interested in such a sequel.


End file.
